


Dragon Bones

by Autaria



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And So Is Mycroft, Dragon-slaying, In which John tries to slay non-existent dragons, M/M, Mpreg at the end, Not actually Dragon!lock because Sherlock is MISTAKEN for a dragon, Perhaps I was mildly influenced by The Hobbit when I wrote this, Sherlock has superpowers of a sort, Slight Sherlock whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autaria/pseuds/Autaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lowly village boy John Watson's heard everything about the dragon living atop the Opal Mountains near his village home, the dragon who causes it to rain non-stop for fifteen days and fifteen nights every year on the 1st of June, no more, no less. One year, when the rain doesn't stop after the designated time period, John travels up the mountain with his best friend Greg to apprehend the dragon. What he finds up in the peaks of the Opal Mountains, however, isn't a dragon at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Right smack in the middle of the London countryside was the old mountain - seven thousand meters of rock, snow, and several pine tree forests which only grew as high as two or three thousand meters. In the light of the morning sun it stood in all its sprawling glory, the triple peaks of the mountain shrouded in cotton-candy clouds. In all honesty, there weren’t supposed to be any mountains in the countryside. In fact, there weren’t supposed to be any mountains at all in London, for that matter. Old maps and atlases which were drawn up by travelers from a time long ago and sequestered away in a secret room in the village library gave no indication of the mountain which stood, tall and looming in the distance of the Baskerville village.  


Very rarely people ventured up the mountain, the common folk dwelling at the village built at the foot of the mountain, passing along rumors and other horror stories of what one might encounter should they attempt to journey to the peaks. There were also other speculations, of the mountain’s origin and how it appeared to have been there all along but was not documented in any kind of journal or map. In fact, a large parchment map, waterproofed and tacked up to the walls of the small, dingy town hall where the village leaders met every-so-often to discuss matters of great importance, showed a path going through the place where the mountain was supposed to be drawn. This particular mystery – the only thing exciting in a sleepy little fishing village with plenty of wild dogs – had baffled the villagers for as long as they could remember, for the riddle of the mountain had been passed down from generation to generation, and the maps had been drawn in the time of their ancestors. 

John Watson was one of the village kids who was intrigued by the mystery, always begging his grandfather – an old-time war veteran – for stories about the mountain. He’d heard them all – cannibal tribes living in the caves chiseled into the sides of the mountain, rocks that would displace themselves randomly and go tumbling down the mountain making sounds like a loud thunderstorm – but he always liked hearing them again and again. Grandpa Watson, sitting perched on his rocking-chair and smoking a pipe, looking quite comfortable, leaned forward and tousled John’s dishwater blonde curls. “All right,” he smiled, pressing a kiss to his five-year-old grandson’s head. “I’ll tell you. When I was born, the mountain was already there. Back then, travelers went up and down the mountain, coming and going as they please, collecting wild rice and exotic fruit from the trees that grew up in the mountain peaks.” 

“They don’t allow people up there anymore,” young John frowned, clearly bemused with his grandfather’s contradiction. 

“Back in my day, it was still safe for people to travel up and down the mountain,” Grandpa Watson chuckled. “And so many tourists came to our village, just to go up and see the scenery. But one day –” he lowered his voice, so as to make it more dramatic – “One day, when I was about your father’s age, I was in the marketplace, buying some supplies for my next fishing trip. And then, a young boy, slightly older than you, came running down from the mountain. He looked like he’d been running for quite some time, because his face was red and he was out of breath. Bloody arse kept screaming something about a dragon in the mountain, about how a dangerous dragon had settled in the peaks.”

“There’s a dragon in the mountains?” John’s eyes grew wide. 

“We did not believe him in the beginning,” Grandpa Watson continued. “Bollocks to his story, we’d say! How could there possibly be such a creature living up there?” He gestured in the general direction of the mountain. “But not quite so long after, it began to rain. It rained for fifteen days and fifteen nights, and in that short couple of days, our crops died, and the river overflowed. The rain was so bad that nobody could leave the village. Some of us tried to, you know, tried to leave the village to go to the town of London, but the valley was slippery after raining for so long. Most people fell down the edge of cliffs or into bogs and never returned. We had to wait for the rain to stop. And after that, the village Council banned anybody from going up into the mountains. The rain was proof enough that there was indeed a dragon living in the mountain peaks and wrecking havoc with the weather. After that, nobody doubted that little boy who saved all our lives by warning us about the dragon in the mountain, and telling us not to go up there.” 

“What’s his name, Grandpa?” 

“James. James Moriarty. He grew up to be the Head of the village Council. You see him during town meetings, remember?” Grandpa Watson reminded John, and scooped the little boy up so John could sit in his lap. “And that’s why it rains for fifteen days and fifteen nights every year – we call it the Lightning Rain – and during that period we have to stay at home because the rain’s too heavy for anybody to leave the village. You might get hurt or get washed into the river, and drown.” He hugged his grandson closer. “And that is why, whenever your Papa and I tell you to stay indoors during the Lightning Rain, you have to stay indoors. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” Little John had nodded, then, and said nothing else but toddled off his grandpa’s lap and headed indoors. A dragon that could manipulate the weather, living up in the old mountain! It certainly seemed much like a fairytale, save the knight in shining armor riding upon his noble steed to save the day and the damsel in distress bits – and John would believe it all to be false, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Lightning Rain continued every year, on the first of June. 

That night, when little John was tucked in bed and about ready to nod off, he peered out of his bedside window and looked at the mountain. In the light of day, it had seemed cheery and picturesque, but in the glow of the crescent moon, it looked ominous and spooky, almost as if it was going to come to life any time to terrorize and plunder the village. The thought scared him a little, so he pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and continued staring at the mountain. Perhaps, one day, when he was old enough and brave, like his grandfather, he’d head up the mountain and kill the dragon. Then the Lightning Rain would stop, and the villagers wouldn’t have any need to suffer for fifteen days and fifteen nights every year.


	2. Chapter 2

Years passed and little John had forgotten all about the dragon in the mountains. The Lightning Rain came and went every year, as it always did, but during that period of time John acquiesced to his father and grandfather’s wishes and stayed indoors, spending his time not gazing out of the window as he did when he was young, but reading old medical journals that his father brought back for him from the village library. By then, the mystery of the mountain and its dangerous dragon was no longer interesting to him. He had far more pressing matters to attend to, such as his own ambitions of becoming a doctor, setting up his own practice in sleepy Baskerville village, or joining the military far away in the town of London, becoming a war veteran just like his grandfather. By then, he no longer entertained notions of traveling up and down the mountain to slay the dragon. He was more focused on learning enough to get himself a village scholarship to the town of London, studying there in one of the established universities – Cambridge, perhaps, or Oxford, and then returning to Baskerville to set up his own practice, find a nice little wife, get married and maybe even have children. 

“Want to come over to mine to study?” He asked Gregory Lestrade, his best friend in the village, one day just after school. They’d just finished football practice, and John had nothing to do the rest of the day, what with his father and grandfather both out of the house at a town meeting – which was mandatory for all adults to attend, but children and teenagers weren’t allowed. That left the boys with a tidy amount of time on their hands. What was more, it was the last day of school, since school usually let out one week early prior to the annual Lightning Rain, and since no one was allowed out of the house during the Rain, John and Greg wouldn’t be seeing each other for fifteen days straight, and John wanted to spend as much time with Lestrade as he could before the Rain came as it usually did, promptly on the 1st of June, never late, never early, as it had for the past twenty or so years. 

Greg shrugged, looking up at the sky. “Sure. But we’d better hurry back to yours. Looks like it’s going to pour.” Sure enough, a cluster of ominous black clouds had gathered in the sky, hovering threateningly just above the tiny village, and there was the distant rumble of thunder. The afternoon sun had disappeared under a thick layer of cloud cover. Crows – the only avian in these parts – flew low, another indication that it was going to rain. 

“That’s odd,” John muttered as they began to jog towards his house. “In the weeks leading up to the Lightning Rain, it’s usually clear skies.” 

“It’s always clear skies,” Greg corrected him, rolling his eyes as the first droplets of rain began to descend upon Baskerville. They came down like gun bullets, stinging the boys’ skin, and Greg held his backpack over his head as a makeshift shelter, trying to prevent himself from getting soaked. As they ran, John veered left to avoid a quickly-forming puddle, bashing into Greg in the process and nearly sending the other boy sprawling to the floor. “Hey!” 

“Sorry, mate,” he called, helping Greg up, and the two of them continued their mad dash towards John’s house. 

A short time later, both of them tumbled onto the porch of John’s house, laughing and grinning at their being soaked, as if they had decided to go bathing in the ocean with all their clothes on. John ran a hand through his wet hair, letting water drip onto the wooden flooring of the porch in rivulets, leaving dark patches on the floorboards. Smirking, he flicked his wet fingers at Greg, chuckling when Greg squealed, squeezing his eyes shut instinctively at the water droplets in his eyes. This war continued on for about another two minutes or so, until John offered Greg a hand, hauling the slightly taller boy up, and in they went to the house. 

John showered as quickly as he could, stripping off his wet clothes and dumping them into a sopping pile into a laundry basket woven with reeds, and scrubbing himself down efficiently. When he was done wasting enough of the village’s clean water, he wrapped a towel around himself, his hair still matted and his skin dotted with water droplets, and headed into the kitchen, where Greg looked as if he was in the midst of putting together turkey ham sandwiches for them both. In the short ten minutes it had taken for him to shower, the rain had gotten heavier – was it even possible? – and was currently doing its best to batter down the kitchen window. A chilly breeze swept into the house through the gap underneath the front door, and John shivered slightly, wrapping the towel a little tighter around himself.

Pulling back the curtains to reveal what looked like the makings of a small typhoon, John peered up into the sky. The coal-black clouds had congregated themselves into a circle, and had gathered in the general area of the town square, where the adults would be having their town meeting. The rain pelted the glass, blurring the buildings outside the house such that John couldn’t even make out Mrs. Hudson’s – their nice, next-door neighbor who always kept John’s house stocked with cookies of some sort – small, yet astonishingly sturdy cottage. The unmistakable _ting!_ of the rain impacting the zinc roof muffled the distant barking of a dog. It looked as if the rain would continue on for a while. In fact, the incumbent storm was almost as bad as the Lightning Rain itself. 

Then it happened. A flash of bright orange light lit up the parts of the sky which weren’t already concealed by black clouds. The peach-colored streak of lightning streaked vertically downward from the heavens to the area behind the town hall, tinting nearby buildings’ zinc roofs with a slightly duller hue of orange. The bolt branched down into three roots heading in different directions, striking the lightning rods installed on three different houses. This was followed by a loud rumbling and crashing of thunder, which shook the house to its very foundation and caused the kitchen countertop to vibrate. There was a frightened squealing sound, and for a moment John was bemused as to whether or not he had made the sound, until he realized that it was Greg who had screamed, startled by the sudden clap of thunder. He would have described the whole sight as _dangerously enrapturing_ , had he not understood what the implications of that colored lightning bolt meant. 

“Greg,” he whispered. 

“Yeah, I know,” his friend muttered. “Sorry. I just wasn’t…expecting that.” 

“No,” he frowned, turning around to grab his friend’s wrist to drag him over to the window, abandoning the half-made sandwiches. “Look.” 

They stood in silence for a while, and when Greg opened his mouth to question his best friend’s sanity, and _what exactly were they standing there waiting for to happen_ , it happened again. This time, a neon pink streak of lightning descended from the heavens, one single jagged bolt, striking the ground a distance away – somewhere in the vicinity of the village boundaries. This time, both of them were expecting the boom of air overheating and exploding, but it didn’t stop the boys from flinching, anyway. Greg’s jaw hung loosely from its hinges, and his eyes were big, the pupils tinted with a pink hue as the light reflected off his eyes. They stood there, somewhat dumbfounded, as they contemplated their next steps and what all this meant. 

Multicolored lightning was a rare phenomenon, occurring nowhere else in the world, occurring at no other time period in the world, with the exception of Baskerville village during the period of the Lightning Rain, which arrived very punctually on the 1st of June, at midnight, no later, and definitely no earlier. Usual storms – even torrential thunderstorms, had lightning which was of a single color – white. For lightning of multiple hues to be flashing down from the heavens and illuminating Baskerville meant only one thing to the villagers – it was the first of June, the date for the Rain. But it currently wasn’t the first of June; the Rain had come a week early, and the Rain never came early. It was always on time, to the nanosecond, John was sure, and this year it had come early. Which meant that…

“Something’s happened to the dragon.” 

Greg looked up from his expert imitation of a goldfish. “Shit.” He frowned, looking down at the wooden floor, and began pacing, which was something he did when he was anxious, or in the first stages of a panic attack. He crossed his arms as he began wearing a trench in the floor, muttering to himself. “No. This isn’t happening. This can’t be true. Something’s wrong. Something bad’s going to happen and we’re all going to die.”

John, meanwhile, was thinking. “It can’t mean that something horrible’s going to happen,” he reassured Greg, although it sounded a little weak, even to his own ears. “Maybe it just started a little earlier this year, that’s all. Maybe the dragon had other plans, and needed to schedule his annual terrorizing of the village a little earlier.” Weak humor, but that was what he did when he was anxious, after all.

“The adults and elders are all in the town hall,” Greg interrupted in the middle of John’s last sentence, as if he hadn’t heard his best friend at all. “If the Lightning Rain’s started, then we very well can’t step out of our houses, not without the risk of getting swept away into one of the bogs or marshes or even the river itself. And that means we’re stuck here, and everybody else is stuck in the town hall. For fifteen days and fifteen nights.” 

“There’s a silo built into the side of the town hall,” John reminded his friend patiently, even though inside he was all for running out into the Rain panicking and screaming and looking for his grandfather and his dad. “They store food there for the town to eat in the winter. There’s more than enough supplies to go around for fifteen days and fifteen nights, even with three quarters of the town’s population in there. And my dad stocked up early this year, because we’ve had surplus. There’s enough food to feed four mouths here.” He rummaged around in the liquor cabinet – something his father had told him never to open, but at the moment, John believed that Greg could use a drink – and produced a bottle of red wine, something the two breadwinners of the house had scrimped and saved to buy. Ah, well, a small cup wouldn’t be missed. Pouring his best friend a drink, John led him to a chair and handed him a champagne flute, watching as Greg downed the whole thing in one gulp. “I’m sure things will turn out fine. You’ll see.” 

“You’re right,” Greg sighed, his head drooping, calming down from his initial panic now that he had a half-flute of wine in his belly, warming him from the inside. “You’re right. Things will turn out fine.” 

“And the Rain will go away in fifteen days and fifteen nights,” John added, pouring him some more wine.

“And the Rain will go away,” Greg parroted, although there was a slight slur to his words. 

“And we’ll all return to our simple, boring lives,” John finished, even though Greg didn’t appear to be coherent any longer. 

Famous last words, he would have told himself, if he knew what was coming next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> School is starting soon, so I may not be able to update as much as I'd like. Be patient :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John and Greg make a decision.

It rained for eighteen days.

It was still raining on the nineteenth morning when John got up from bed, stretched, and tilted his head toward his bedside window to check if the rain had let up, as he had for the past eighteen mornings. And, like the past eighteen mornings, the feeling of disappointment tinged with a slight fear came rushing back, questions such as _Will the Rain ever stop?_ and _How much longer can the food last us?_ and _I wonder how Grandpa and Papa are doing_ bombarded his head. He and Greg had rationed their food carefully, eating two small meals a day, such that there was enough food left for at least another two months, if they continued eating as little as they did each day. But even their food couldn’t last forever – if the rain didn’t stop sooner rather than later, they were going to starve to death. At least John was reassured of his grandfather and father’s safety in the town hall, because he knew at least they had food there. 

Grandpa had called on the night the Lightning Rain had started. It seemed the Council was permitting one phone call per person in the town hall, for the villagers to contact their children and family at home to check if everything was all right, in lieu of the unexpected early Lightning Rain. “We’ve no idea why it started so early this year,” Grandpa Watson had said, and John could hear the worry in his voice, as well as the static crackle of the speaker that followed his sigh. “It’s never happened before. It’s always come on time, always punctual, never late and never early.” John had proceeded to reassure his grandfather that he was safe at home, and yes there was food, and no he would not open the door to strangers, _who the hell would come visiting in the middle of the Lightning Rain? _and that he would stay at home until the Rain stopped.__

__“And could you tell Greg’s parents that he’s here with me, too?” John requested, while Greg sat beside him, listening raptly. “Tell them that he’s fine. They’ll call us later, when they get their turn at the phone? Okay, thank you, Grandpa. Is Papa all right? Okay, that’s good. Do you guys have enough food? That’s great. Wrap up warm and keep safe, okay? Love you.” And then, “What’s the town hall meeting about?” It was an effort to get his worried grandfather’s mind off the Rain, at least._ _

__“The village Key has gone missing,” Grandpa Watson told him. “Do you know the golden key in the town hall building? The one in the display stand. It’s gone missing, overnight. The elders don’t know who took it, so they’re launching an investigation, but they don’t have any leads, so they want to know if anybody knows who stole the Key. It’s a bloody awful thing, really. It’s been in the village for fifty years, and now some arsehole’s gone and stolen it.”_ _

__“What reason would they have to take it?” John frowned. “It’s not like it would sell for a lot of money, and it doesn’t even open any doors.”_ _

__“That’s the problem – the historical value it holds is only worth to our village,” Grandpa Watson sounded equally as flabbergasted as John felt. “Anyway, we’ll probably have to wait a bit for the Rain to stop before we can continue the investigation. James Moriarty isn’t back yet from his annual visit to London, you see, so we can’t do much because we haven’t consulted him about it. It went missing a couple of days after he left for London. He’s quite brilliant at solving small mysteries like this.” There was a rustle, and then John could hear murmurings on the other end, before his grandfather was talking to him again. “All right, it seems my time is up. I’ll call you again if they let us use the phone again, okay?” They exchanged declarations of platonic affection for each other before John had to hang up._ _

__Between the first night and the nineteenth morning, Grandpa Watson and Greg’s parents had called twice each, and Grandpa Watson had warned John that the Council was trying to conserve what little electrical energy the backup generators provided, so it was unlikely that they would be able to call home for the next couple of days, until the Lightning Rain stopped. When the date for the Rain to stop had come and gone, they had received another phone call from a near hysteric Mrs. Lestrade and Grandpa Watson, who had managed to mask his catatonia at the Lightning Rain not stopping a little better than Greg’s mother, but John could still hear it in his voice. The town Council was still not letting anybody out of the town hall, even locking the doors to safeguard the villagers from the Rain, and ordering all the worried parents in the building to call their children to inform them to stay at home and not leave their houses._ _

__Currently, John was making a list of all the food they had in the house, clearly giving in to his need for organization at times of a crisis such as this. Greg was looking out of the living room window glumly, a paperback edition of the _Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King_ laid open on the table beside him. John had tried to ease him out of his depressed mood by getting him to read, but it had already been nineteen days, and the Rain didn’t seem to be letting up, nor did the clouds give any sign of clearing anytime soon. The wind was stronger than ever, and seemed to pick up speed with every passing day of the Lightning Rain. The lightning continued on, a single bolt descending from the sky every two minutes or so, sometimes accompanied by thunderclaps, sometimes silent. And the rain. The metallic sounds of the rain droplets hitting the rooftop didn’t ever seem to cease, not even when John put in earplugs to block out the sound. Sooner or later, John swore that he was going to go crazy listening to the constant sound of the rain pelting the surfaces of the house. _ _

__“Don’t you think we ought to do something?” Greg frowned, sliding off what seemed to be his permanent place at the couch and coming to crouch beside his best friend, where John appeared to be in the midst of counting the number of loaves of bread they had left._ _

__“What?” John finished counting and scribbled a number in his notepad._ _

__“We should do something,” Greg reiterated, slightly louder. He plucked the notebook from John and scanned it. “The Rain’s not stopping anytime soon, and I’m going crazy listening to the rain and the thunder.”_ _

__“Are you suggesting what I think you’re saying?” John looked at his best friend as if he’d grown another head._ _

__“Look at things rationally,” Greg said, because John had always been the rational, logical one out of them both. The one who’d always weighed the pros and cons carefully before making a decision, the one who logic appealed to. “This Rain isn’t stopping anytime soon. Our folks are trapped in the town hall and there’s nothing they can do, because the Council’s got strict regulations and rules about this kind of thing. But we can. We can go out there, we can sneak past the town boundaries – because there isn’t going to be anyone guarding it, not in the Lightning Rain – and we can climb the mountain, go to the peaks.”_ _

__“We can’t do that! It’s dangerous,” John argued. Honestly, he had toyed with the idea himself, on the sixteenth morning, when the Rain showed no sign of stopping, but the logical part of his brain had promptly kicked in and informed the part of him that was churning out odd ideas like traveling up the mountain to shut up, because there was absolutely no way they were going to make it up the Opal Mountain alive. Twenty years of the mountain being inaccessible to the villagers would cause the pathways that previous travelers had used to become rundown. That, coupled with the fact that it was probably slippery and muddy, would cause the journey up the mountain to be extremely risky and life-threatening._ _

__“We can’t just sit around here, hiding like frightened mice. We should go up, try and do something to stop the Lightning Rain from drowning our village. See what’s up with the dragon.”_ _

__“ _See what’s up with the dragon!_ ” John exploded. “The _dragon_ , Greg! You’re talking about the two of us, puny little boys who aren’t taller than 1.7 meters, taking a treacherous journey up to the Opal Mountain peaks, that same mountain which many stories talk about cannibal tribes and odd creatures living up there, to confront a massive, scaly, fire-breathing, possibly several-headed dragon that can control the weather!” A short reprieve from the harangue as John fumed, while Lestrade stared at him, wide-eyed. “You cannot expect us to return from there _alive,_ even if we don’t slip and fall into some deep, dark crevice, or get crushed by a boulder tumbling down! Or get eaten by carnivorous fairies, I don’t know what the bloody hell lives up there.” _ _

__A long silence, as Greg waited for John to collect himself before speaking again._ _

__“Look,” Greg tried to reason with John quietly. “The Rain doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon, agree?”_ _

__John nodded, not trusting himself to speak in fear that he would ignite his temper again._ _

__“And we have limited amounts of food. Given, it could probably last us a little while more, but it’s not going to last forever. We’ve got to do something. And we can’t do anything whilst confined in this house, because we’re not going to be able to stop the Lightning Rain here, unless you’re Gandalf or something, then you could magic the Rain away.” He watched the sides of his friend’s mouth pull themselves up, slightly, and chuckled softly himself. “But we can’t do anything here, so the only logical option is that we have to leave the house. And where would we go to? If Baskerville has a weakness, it’s that the village was built right at the bottom of a valley blocking access to London. There’s absolutely no way we can climb the hill to go to London, because we’d be saving ourselves but abandoning our families, something neither of us wishes to do, if we don’t get swept into the river or a bog and drown while trying to get out of the valley, anyway. Considering that the Lightning Rain is concentrated towards the center of Baskerville and towards the edge of the valley, and less towards the Opal Mountain, it should be easier to scale Opal Mountain rather than try to escape to London, wouldn’t you say so?”_ _

__John said nothing, merely staring at the floor for a long while. Greg breathed heavily through his nose and looked out of the window. Their part of the village was already slightly waterlogged, and John’s house was located on the most elevated part of the village. If there was already a ten-inch water level at the front steps of their porch, then the town square was most certainly a good substitute for the river and its marine life._ _

__“All right,” John sighed. “It’s the only logical option. We’ll go see the dragon.”_ _

____

\--- 

They packed what food they could cram into two of the biggest waterproof backpacks in the house, one belonging to Grandpa Watson from when he was still in the army, and another John had received when he was a little boy from a distant aunt who had taken away his elder sister Harriet to live in London when their mother had passed. Greg had tossed everything in pell-mell, but John had forced him to dump everything out again and repack it properly to optimize the space. He’d shaken his head when Greg showed him a couple of bottles of jam and bread spreads, insisting they take carbohydrates and energy-dense foods to sustain them on their journey. They packed several changes of clothes, and sleeping bags. Surely the mountains were full of caves they could sleep in when night came.

“We’ll leave in the middle of the night,” John told his best friend. “Everybody will be asleep and nobody will be stationed at the town boundaries – not in the Rain.”

They dug out waterproofed boots with spikes covering the soles, to minimize the possibility of either of them slipping on mud. There were ski poles, too, just in case the spikes weren’t enough, and to give them extra sturdiness on muddy ground. John insisted they take several other things, like goggles, to ensure their vision would not be affected by the constant rain, and waterproof winter jackets, for the weather was chilly and at nights it would appear to reach subzero temperatures because of the storm. They also hooked small canteens to their backpacks – one good thing about the Rain was that there was no chance that they would ever go thirsty.

“I’d better leave a note,” John decided, just as he and Greg were about to head out. “In case they come back and find us gone.” Sitting at the dining table – quite possibly for the last time, a small part of John’s brain said – John frowned as he thought about what he ought to say to the two people who had loved him ever since he was born and had made him promise repeatedly that he would never go out in the Lightning Rain. He looked up to see Greg settling into the chair opposite him, with a sheet of white paper and a pencil. “I figure I should leave something behind, too,” he shrugged, and began scribbling. 

What should he say? _Grandpa, I’m leaving to do battle with a dangerous dragon. I love you and Papa dearly, though. Sorry for breaking my promise._ For a moment his mind wandered to another one of his childhood books, something that his grandfather had read to him in bed every night – _The Hobbit._ Little Bilbo Baggins, fighting off Smaug the Magnificent at the top of the Lonely Mountains! That sounded an awful lot like what he was currently going to attempt. Except that Bilbo had come back alive to Bag End with gold and other riches, and there was a much higher chance that he wasn’t going to come back at all. 

_Grandpa,_ he scrawled, in his scribbled cursive that his grandpa would definitely recognize. _I love you and Papa dearly. I hope you can forgive me, but the Rain doesn’t appear to be stopping, so Greg and I have gone up the peaks to investigate. If you’re reading this, it means that the Rain has stopped and you, Papa and the other villagers are safe. I’ll try to come back. I promise I will._ There seemed to be nothing else that he could add, so he placed the salt shaker atop the note to weigh it down and prevent the wind from sweeping it away. Opposite him, Greg had done the same. 

“Ready to go?” Greg grinned, and John felt a sudden sense of adventure and a lust for danger overwhelm him. He smirked and strapped on his backpack, grabbing a pair of ski poles and opening the front door.

Outside, it was still pouring. The village looked dark and dreary, and just as Greg had suspected – there wasn’t a soul about, not even at the guard house stationed right next to the town boundary. Thankfully, John’s house was just a block away from the boundary, and Mrs. Turner, who lived in between the Watson house and the gateway to the Opal Mountains, was probably at the town hall meeting with her married ones, so no one would be able to see them heading for the mountain. The boys snapped on their goggles, and their waterproofed boots, and stood watching the area silently for anybody looking out of their window; anybody that could possibly rat them out to the town Council.

“Let’s go,” John grinned, and they took off.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the boys make interesting discoveries.

Ascending the mountain wasn’t as hard as they had expected it to be. 

To be honest, John had expected slipping and sliding, bumping his head on the boulders that every so often popped up on either sides of the main path and giving himself a concussion; getting captured by a cannibal tribe and be tied to a spit and slowly roasted over a fire; or even falling into an unexpected ravine with a river at the bottom and a strong current that led to gushing waterfalls with rocks at the bottom, where they would plummet to an untimely death. Perhaps they would be stung by poisonous hornets or get torn to bloody shreds by wolves. Maybe they would run out of food and be reduced to eating berries that would give them stomachaches, and retch out their appendixes. Or they could get assaulted by a bear. There were a hundred grim ways their deaths could have occurred.

He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or glad that the journey wasn’t as treacherous as he had thought it was. The storm clouds of the Lightning Rain were concentrated nearer to the part of the village nearer to the valley (as mentioned previously), and while there was somewhat of a category 2 hurricane occurring in Baskerville, there was only a light rain in the Opal Mountains. Lightning did not flash in the mountain area, only near the village, and the path wasn’t as muddy as they had anticipated it to be. Sure, it was soft, but it was firmer than they had thought it would be, and the spikes on their boots coupled with the ski poles did a marvelous job of keeping them steady on their path. 

They were hiking in the woodland that covered the first few hundred feet of the mountain’s base, which John had dubbed the Pine Forest, aptly named for the numerous number of pines in the area. Yes, it was for lack of a good imagination that he had named the forest just so, but it served its purpose, for John had felt the need to draw up a map, and for that he needed to name the places that they were passing through. He had also felt the need to keep a journal for the trek up the mountain, so that if they happened to perish halfway to the top, and if ever there was somebody else who attempted to climb the mountain, they could find the journal and be notified of the way that the boys had died, and avoid it. John had brought along his copy of _The Hobbit_ , as if hoping the luck that the main character in the story enjoyed whilst on his adventure to rob Smaug’s treasure hoard would be passed on to him, despite knowing that the book took up precious space in his backpack, which he probably could have used to stuff another loaf of bread or a shirt. 

“We didn’t bring a weapon,” Greg had announced forlornly, after they had hiked for two hours straight without stopping. 

“What?” John turned his head to give his friend a sideways glance. 

“A weapon,” Greg repeated. “You know. If we’re ever going to confront this dragon, we’re going to need something to defend ourselves with and something to attack it.”

“Bollocks,” John cursed, but then he paused. “Wherever would we get a weapon from? It’s not like I have a sword hidden away in my house or a gun. My grandfather had to return his gun to the army after he came back from the war. And my father doesn’t have any weapons. It’s not like he’s an antique sword collector.” 

Greg shrugged. “I suppose we can always stab it with our ski poles.” 

John chuckled, watching his best friend’s eyes twinkle mischievously, and uncurled a gloved hand from his ski pole to ruffle Greg’s silver-black hair. “Git,” he sighed affectionately. “We’ll…adapt, I suppose, improvise using whatever we can. Suppose we reach the Opal Peaks with no weapons. Well, you’ll enter the cave and bait the dragon, whilst I lie in wait at the cave opening – I assume he’ll be living inside a cave – and when you run out of the cave, I’ll stab it in the foot with my Swiss Army knife. How’s that of a plan for you?” 

“Wanker,” Greg groused, but he chuckled and shoved John playfully. This continued on for several more hours, as they trekked through the Pine Forest, passing the time by discussing plans of attack when they encountered the dragon, some ridiculous, some serious and applicable. The rain grew lighter and lighter the higher they went up the mountain, and so their spirits grew higher and higher. The ground became firmer, and so the boys had hooked their ski poles to their backpacks, leaving both their hands free. Greg had taken to breaking off branches from trees and fashioning them into haphazard weapons, such as a wooden club – only the branch he had used was rotting, and had promptly split into two when he bashed it against a boulder – and a misshapen bow and arrow that wouldn’t fire properly, which had prompted a “Who do you think you are? Legolas?” from John. 

It had been several hours since they had started their journey, and they had already cleared the Pine Forest and were trekking up on open, gradual grass plains that stretched for a couple of kilometers. Several white-and-black animals dotted the plains, and Greg gave a triumphant shout when he realized that they were wild cows, grazing. For cows to live on the mountains meant that it was habitable and safe, surely? Had the town Council been lying to the villagers about how inhospitable and dangerous the mountain was? So far, their journey had been uneventful, except for a few rotting branches falling and nearly hitting them. There were no cannibal tribes, no tumbling boulders, no ravines or crevices. Both boys were starting to have their doubts about the village elders, who had often imparted these horror stories to them when they were children. 

By now, if they looked far away, Baskerville seemed like a tiny dot from their vantage point, and the dark clouds gathered above it were still circling the village threateningly. The town hall stood tallest among all the buildings visible, a wooden structure built as if it was pointing an accusatory finger at the sky, and John reminded himself that this journey was for the sole purpose of rescuing the poor villagers from the never-ending Rain. By now, the Lightning Rain had slowed to a drizzle, and even though there were few grey clouds above them the sky was already darkening, the day progressing into evening. There would only be at least an hour or two more of light, and then it would be dark, and they would be forced to stop for the night. 

“We’d better find a place to stay for the night,” John decided. “We’re far enough from Baskerville now that they won’t find us even if they sent a search party. The rain’s washed away most of our tracks, so they can’t possibly know which path we’ve taken.” 

“Good,” Greg yawned. “We can either find a cave to sleep in, or we can sleep on the open fields with these cows.” 

“We’ll find a cave, or at least some shelter,” John decided. “I suspect it’s going to rain throughout the night, and we might as well find some reprieve from the storm.” This high up the Opal Mountains, there was only the occasional flash of multicolored   
lightning, perhaps once every three hours, but that was it. It was obvious that the storm was much milder here as compared to in Baskerville, where it was torrential.

“I see some shelter,” Greg pointed to the side of the mountain – a slight concave section into the mountain wall. It was small, probably just enough for both boys to settle within and, if they lay flat in their sleeping bags, their toes would be sheltered from the rain; but just barely. There was, however, enough space for their backpacks and ski poles if they were to put their belongings in between them. A brown cow lay several meters from the shelter, and gazed at them uninterestedly as they settled into their lodgings for the night, both boys shrugging out of their waterproof jackets, swiping as much water as they could off the plastic material, and laying it atop their packs to dry. They hadn’t changed into new clothes, for they hadn’t sweated a lot, due to the chill of the wind, and also because like their food, there was also a need to ration their clothes. Greg had set an alarm clock for four the next morning, giving them an early head-start and a perfectly ample eight hours of rest. They ate a light dinner, and then settled in for the night. 

“You know, this all seems a little too surreal for me,” John admitted to his best friend, sitting against the cave wall with his legs crossed, his journal and his grandfather’s fountain pen in his lap. “I never thought I’d ever visit the Opal Mountains.” 

“And yet here we are, on an adventure.” Greg added. 

“How far up do you reckon we’ve traveled by now?” John asked, scribbling furiously in the journal. 

“I’d estimate 150 meters elevation or so.” Greg shrugged, turning over in his sleeping bag and settling comfortably, like a giant caterpillar within a chrysalis. They lay like that, in silence for the next five minutes, until Greg turned around, rustling his sleeping bag as he did so. The sudden movement startled John, who frowned at his best friend – or what he could see of Greg, at least, in the last beams of the fading sun. 

“Did you hear that?”

John’s frown deepened, and inclined his head towards the shelter opening, closing his eyes to enhance his hearing. For the next minute, there was absolute silence, broken only by the soft pitter-patter of rain on mud – which would have almost been therapeutic had John not grown sick of the sound of rain – the rustling of grass, and the occasional dragging moo from a cow who was settling in for the evening. John shook his head. “What am I supposed to hear?” 

“Shh, listen. There it was again!” Greg crept out of his sleeping bag, crouching at the entrance of the shelter stealthily. He lifted a hand in a stop motion to tell John not to make a sound, and then shuffled slowly out of the small cave, towards the direction where he had apparently heard the sound. John was bemused for a moment, for he had heard nothing, but Greg had clearly wanted him to stay put and keep his mouth shut, so there was nothing to do but wait. From his position, he could see a flash of soft green light illuminating Baskerville in the distance. Obviously the Lightning Rain hadn’t stopped yet. John wondered, for a moment, if the Council had discovered that they were gone. Had Grandpa called home and panicked when no one answered? Unlikely – they were probably still trying to conserve what little electrical energy they had. 

Several minutes passed before Greg reappeared at the entrance of the shelter, ducking his head so that he wouldn’t hit the low ceiling. “There’s someone here,” he whispered, just as John was going to demand what was up, his eyes bright. 

“Up in the mountains?” John whispered back, trying to make his expression as incredulous as possible. 

“Yeah, mate. I heard voices.” Greg shrugged into his waterproof jacket, trying to don the protective clothing as quietly as possible. “Come on, let’s take a look, see what they’re up to.” 

“Maybe they’re finding the dragon like us,” John shrugged, but went to see.

They crawled out of the cave entrance, both boys walking on the balls of their feet so as to minimize sound. With one hand on the granite mountain wall, they tiptoed, John creeping along behind Greg as his best friend led the way. They walked on for about fifteen minutes, but stopped when the mountain wall ended abruptly and began to curve inward in the shape of a semicircle. It would have been a cave if the top of the opening had been sheltered, but as it was rainwater dripped freely from a hundred meters above to the soft ground below. If you looked at the opening from above, the mountain walls would resemble a horseshoe. The opening was well hidden away, however, facing away from Baskerville, such that both boys hadn’t seen it before when they were trekking up the mountain.

What was interesting was that there were several tunnel entrance, big enough to fit a whole elephant in there, perhaps, located at the bottom of the opening. The tunnels were perfectly circular, as if someone had chiseled them into the walls – and someone most probably had. 

“Look,” murmured Greg, pointing in the distance. 

John had to squint to make out the human-shaped silhouette hunching in the distance, near one of the tunnel openings. He appeared to be conversing with someone hidden in the tunnel. Beside him, there was a trolley stacked high with wooden crates – the same kind which goods arrived in from London to Baskerville. Perched precariously on the topmost crate was a small lantern which illuminated the area in a one-meter radius. There were lights coming from some of the tunnel openings, and John guessed that there were definitely more people inside. 

“The Rain’s just got to last a couple more days, just in time for us to finish the job,” someone said, so sudden that it almost startled the boys out of their hiding positions. It was definitely not the silhouette far off in the distance who had said those words, for he was too far away to be heard so clearly; but another guy, leaning near the area where John and Greg were hiding, talking to a group of men who were chewing cigarette stubs in their mouth. This group had no lanterns, and it was fortunate that the boys had discovered the existence of this particular group of men before they could blow their cover. 

_Finish the job?_ John frowned. _And what’s all this about the Rain lasting a couple more days?_

“I don’t think they can make it a couple more days,” another man was saying. “They looked so worn. The younger bastard wouldn’t even eat.”

“He doesn’t eat on most days,” the first man nodded. “Still has the energy to mouth off to people, though.”

“Yeah, he did that,” the second man groused. “Had to give him a couple black-and-blues to remind him of his place.” 

“The boss ain’t going to be happy,” a third voice warned. 

“As long as they’re alive, he doesn’t really care,” the second voice sounded nonchalant. 

“Anyway, we’ll just need to tolerate this business for another week or so, until the boss finishes with his business underground that old town,” the first man nodded towards the direction of Baskerville. “Then we’ll be swimming in money.” 

“So what’re you gonna do with your share of the profit?” The three men tossed away their cigarette stubs and began walking toward the tunnel entrances. Greg waited until their voices weren’t able to be heard anymore before peeking his head around the corner slowly to confirm that they were gone, and turning back to his friend. “What was that?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” John hissed back. “But there was something about Baskerville. Something underneath our town.” 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Greg muttered. 

“As do I.” There were hundreds of questions bombarding John’s mind right now, and he felt a desperate need to get all the answers. “How can there be people this far up the mountain? Didn’t the Council ban all travelers from going up here? And besides, the only way to get up the mountain is by passing through Baskerville first, and I’ve never seen them before.”

“We should investigate,” Greg grinned, and John could tell that he’d been wanting to say those words for a very long time. It was probably linked to his dream career as a policeman, though. Rolling his eyes, they waited for all the silhouettes in sight to go down into the tunnel entrance before they ran to one of the holes – one that looked as if it had nobody in it, anyway – and, in the cover of the shadows, vanished into the dark.

\--- 

The tunnels were long, and winding, and they seemed to be never-ending. After wandering about in the darkness for a while, both hands touching the tunnel walls on each side, the boys realized that the tunnels were a complex system built into the mountain itself. They went deep into the mountain, and after a while, the cave wall began to reflect dim torch light, and they could hear voices. In the middle of the mountain, a cylinder-spaced area had been hollowed out – it was deep and wide across – with multiple floors and storage areas. Men dressed in identical black uniforms with the initials J.M. monogrammed on the breast pocket were milling around, some pushing wooden crates, some carrying what looked like blaster guns – John shivered at the thought of getting caught and staring into the barrel of one of those weapons.

“This is no dragon,” John murmured. 

What was most interesting, however, was the fact that the bottommost floor contained piles and piles of shiny, golden treasures, reflecting the fire of the torches. Men were emptying crates of gold and equally expensive-looking jewelry and accessories, and then stacking up the boxes neatly to a side. 

The boys didn’t speak for a while, simply hiding in the shadows and marveling at the sight of all that treasure – this was much better than a dragon, indeed! Greg broke the silence after a while, grabbing John’s hand and sliding down the tunnel walls into a sitting position. “What are we going to do?” He hissed. “That’s at least seventy men down there, and there’s two of us. And I’m pretty sure they’re the ones responsible for the Lightning Rain – we’ve got to find some way to stop the Rain here. There’s got to be a control panel or a switch or _something_.”

Had they really only been in his cozy little house in the village this morning? It seemed like an eternity ago, now that they were on a proper adventure with what appeared to be a secret organization operating in the mountains. Gone were the childish notions of dragons. This was much more realistic than a fire-breathing lizard. John rubbed his eyes and pinched himself to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming, and then he sat up straight and contemplated the situation. “We need a plan.” Furrowing his eyebrows and looking down on the scene below them, he felt a flash of adventure – that same feeling he’d felt before, it was like liquid gold running through his veins – jolt through him, encasing his heart in its grip, making him excited and antsy all at once. “And I may just have one.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John meets Sherlock. (do I hear a collective FINALLY!)

The boys split up. 

The plan was simple – they would explore different parts of the caverns for several hours, and then rendezvous back at the original tunnel from which they had left. From there, since they knew the layout of the caverns better, Greg would create a diversion of sorts while John would head towards – he was assuming the Lightning Rain was being controlled by a control panel or a switch or _something_ along those lines – the place, whatever place that the Rain was being controlled by, and try to stop the village from being completely drowned. 

Two hours into exploring and John had almost gotten caught three times. After the last time, he decided that there was probably a more efficient way of moving around the caverns rather than ducking into the shadows every time he saw a guard, so he climbed into the air vents and continued his adventure much more safely. 

“Bastard!” He heard one of the men yell, and he froze, scared that perhaps Greg had gotten himself caught. There was the distinct sound of a whip cracking, causing John to flinch. Were they interrogating Greg? Had Greg refused to speak and thus forced them to use various methods of medieval torture to pry answers from his lips? John shuddered. He crawled closer until he was directly above the source of the noise, and then peered down to take a look. 

It wasn’t Greg. The iron grip on his heart released temporarily, and relief flooded through John when he discovered that Greg hadn’t been captured, but then it returned when he realized that they were hurting someone else. Peering through the small rectangle of light that allowed him to spy directly on the occupants of the room, John could see two men flanking a cart filled with whips, tasers, and various other unpleasant weapons. And there was someone else, another boy – around his age, but slightly taller – half-naked and kneeling, his hair a messy disarray of grimy black-brown curls. His hands were strung behind his back, and his back was facing the guards – well, what has once been his back, at least. Instead of pale, unmarked skin, it was full of whip marks, some healed, some half-healed and reopened, bleeding crimson liquid onto the filthy stone floor. Considering that the leather whips looked as if they were teeming with germs, the wounds were most probably infected. 

The boy flinched as they whip landed on his skin, creating another ugly mark and marring what would have been beautiful, pale marble skin had the flesh fully healed. 

Was this what those men had been talking about just now, outside the caverns? Perhaps. John bit his lip to prevent himself from crying out as another lash landed right in the middle of a recently re-opened whip wound. The boy didn’t even utter a sound.

“Where’s that smart mouth of yours now, huh?” One of the guards was yelling. He cracked the whip against the wall, smirking slightly when the boy bristled.

“All right, that’s enough. Boss’ll have our skin if we damage him too much,” the other guard said. 

“Back into the cage you go,” the first man barked, and that was the boy’s cue to stand – rather shakily; he swayed a little before using the walls for leverage – and stumbled into a small section of the room which had been enclosed with steel bars. The second guard closed the door and locked it behind him, whistling as he jangled the keys and hooked the key-ring back onto his belt. “You’re to keep the Rain going on for a week more, ya hear? Boss has his business to finish.” 

The boy didn’t say anything, but flinched slightly when the guard clanged the gate of his tiny prison shut.

“Now be a good boy and don’t cause any trouble,” the first guard sneered. “The boss already sentenced ya to a full day’s isolation with no food and no water, and I’d _hate_ to have to report anything to him that would cause your prison sentence to extend itself.” The two of them laughed uproariously, a sound that irked John and caused the hair on his arms and legs to stand, and left the small room, wheeling the cart of torture weapons out with them. The metallic sound of a lock clicking into place sounded as they slammed the door behind them. The sound of their laughter faded into the distance, along with their footsteps. 

There was silence for a moment. John stayed in his current position, not daring to move even his smallest finger, for fear that it would create noise and send the guards running back. 

“You can come down, you know,” the boy in the cage murmured, still staring down at the floor. 

The sudden sound of his voice startled John, but he still didn’t move from his position. What if the boy was speaking to one of his comrades, who was also hiding somewhere in the room, like John? It would not do for John to give away his position, even if this boy didn’t seem to be on the side of the men working for the organization hiding in the mountains. 

“You. In the air vent.” The boy spoke quietly, but lifted his head up, his eyes meeting the exact position where John was hiding, even though John was pretty sure his entire being was concealed by the shadows and that he hadn’t made a sound since the guards were in the room. “You can come down. Didn’t you hear? They were sentencing me to a full day’s isolation. That means no one else would be coming into this room to interact with me. No one would catch you.” _Perhaps interaction was quite a mild word for what he had just witnessed five minutes ago._ “Really, repeating myself is becoming quite tedious. Don’t make me tell you to come down for the third time.” 

John shuffled to his knees, and lifted the panel to the air vent gently, sliding it to the side gently so that it wouldn’t clatter to the floor of the air vent and make a din. Slipping down and landing on the balls of his feet so that he made nary a sound, John took a tentative couple of steps to the boy in the prison cell. 

“Hello.” 

Unsure of what to say, John kept quiet and raked his eyes over the emaciated boy, analyzing his new acquaintance. Beautiful baby blue eyes stared back at him under long eyelashes, giving him an equally calculating and assessing stare. Despite just having been beaten, there was still a spark of the spirit of rebellion somewhere within those deep irises. John didn’t know how to describe those gorgeous eyes. They were more beautiful than any of the treasures he’d seen on the bottommost floor, more precious than any mined gem or rare metal. He wanted to lose himself in there forever, to drown himself in them. The boy’s eyes spoke of intelligence and secrets, knowledge that John wanted to learn every word of. They were simply _stunning_ , John felt that he wouldn’t be able to say another word, and they were just his _eyes_. The rest of him was equally as beautiful – John decidedly bit his lip before his traitorous mouth could began waxing and waning poetry about the god-like beauty of this boy. Those utterly incredible cheekbones, and those pale pink luscious lips _oh god he never felt such an urge to kiss anybody like that before,_ and that adorable nose, as sharp as the rest of him was. 

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The absurdity of that sudden question pulled John back to reality, and he blinked in confusion. “Excuse me?” 

“Your grandfather.” The boy rolled his eyes. “Afghanistan or Iraq?” 

“Uh…Afghanistan.” John frowned. “How…”

“There is a standard army-grade multi-purpose knife peeking out of your pocket. Even in this light, you can tell it’s well-polished and taken care of. Despite that, however, the plastic sheathing is slightly worn, something you can’t prevent no matter how well you take care of it. Obviously, it’s much older than _you_ are, so it must have belonged to someone else before the owner passed it to you. Most likely it belonged to a military man in your family, or at least someone that you’re close to who has been in the military, but seeing that you only have one friend and your mother has passed, that narrows the list down to two people – your father and your grandfather. Seeing that there have been no recent wars concerning the nation’s involvement in, it must be your grandfather who was the knife’s previous owner.” The boy shrugged, nonchalant, as if he’d done something as simple as popping bread into the toaster, but John’s jaw was threatening to dislodge, and his eyes were wide. 

“How did you…”

“Know?” The boy finished for him, pushing himself into a standing position, grimacing with the effort it took to do so. “I merely observed.” 

“That was…” John attempted not to look like a goldfish. “That was _amazing_.” 

The boy looked surprised. “That’s not what people usually say.” 

“And what do people usually say?” John was trying his best not to look like a fool in front of the most gorgeous boy he’d seen in his life. 

“ _Piss off._ ” John chuckled at that, softly, because he did not dare make too much noise for fear of anybody discovering his presence. “Well, I’m not most people,” he shrugged. 

“Sherlock Holmes.” The boy offered a hand through the bars, and even though it was grimy and black with dirt it was still _perfect,_ pianist-like fingers, smooth and graceful curling around John’s hand as he reached to meet it.

“John Watson,” John stuttered, his brain still trying to reboot from the short-circuit it had experienced as he was marveling about Sherlock’s eyes. _Bit creepy, that,_ the reasonable part of his brain kicked in. “Are you...the guard said something about how ‘the boss’ wanted the Rain to continue on for a couple more days, and…are you the one who controls the Rain?” 

“You’re from Baskerville,” Sherlock realized. 

“Yes. So – are you the one who controls it?” 

“I…” Sherlock frowned, appearing to decide what to say next. “I don’t do _all_ the work.” 

“So you are responsible for it.” 

“Partly so, yes.” 

“Can you stop it?” 

Sherlock sighed. “I don’t create the rain, nor the clouds. I do, however, control the lightning and their various colors.” At John’s bemused stare, he shifted closer, and held his hands together. A golf-ball sized sphere appeared, cradled within his bare palms, the orb electric-blue in color. Thin, jagged lines of electricity weaved in and out of the sphere, crackling softly as it did so. At a subtle flick of Sherlock’s wrist, the color of the sphere changed from blue to a royal purple, and then crimson, forest-green, turquoise, and then baby-blue, the same shade as Sherlock’s eyes. When he looked up, John’s eyes were practically trying to squeeze themselves out of their sockets, filled with wonder and amazement, devoid of fear. 

“That’s absolutely incredible.” The words came out in a whisper. 

Sherlock chuckled, snapping his fingers, causing the orb of electrical energy to dissipate. “Again, that’s not what people usually say.” 

“Again, what do they usually say?” 

“They don’t say anything, actually. They just turn tail and run in the opposite direction.” 

“Well, I thought that was incredible. So…if you control the lightning, couldn’t you stop it?” 

“That…would not be the best of ideas.” Sherlock began to pace around in his cell. His low baritone seemed to fill the room, and it enveloped John, calming him, even though he was in the belly of a dangerous criminal organization, talking to a boy he barely knew, and was running a high risk of getting caught by guards at any moment. “For one, if I were to stop it this instant, the guards would be alerted, and they would send someone to my cell. You would most definitely be discovered.”

“I’ll climb up to the air vent.” 

“No, you don’t understand. I’ve done it before, on one of my first days here, when they first captured me. They…” he winced, visibly, and then stretched out his arm, tentatively. There was a long scar, nearly half an inch wide and dragging from his wrist all the way up to his shoulder. “They said if I ever did it again, during the Rain, they would hurt my brother.” 

“You have a brother.” John repeated numbly, his mind still whirling, trying to get facts straight. 

“Yes, I do. He’s imprisoned separately from me. About two floors above me, I’d say. He’s the one who creates the storm clouds and causes it to rain.” 

“Wait a second,” John held out his palms. “If you’ve got...the ability to…uh, manipulate electricity…” 

“Electrokinesis,” Sherlock supplied, all the while inspecting his filthy fingernails with the air of an uninterested party. 

“If you’re electrokinetic,” John corrected himself. “Then wouldn’t it be extremely easy for you to knock out all those guards and escape?” 

Sherlock sighed, frowning, throwing up his hands. “If I were able to escape, wouldn’t you think I’ve done it already?” He exhaled heavily, turning away from John for a moment, as if unable to handle the fact that John was so _spectacularly stupid._ “I can’t. The guards’ uniforms are made of materials that have extremely high electrical resistance. Everything they use to…” he swallowed, gesturing towards his wounds. “Everything they use to hurt me, it’s highly electrical resistant. My abilities aren’t of any use.” 

John nodded somberly, taking this all in. He stood in silence for a few moments, collecting all the facts. _I just met a boy called Sherlock, he’s electrokinetic, and he’s responsible for the multicolored lightning during the Rain. He has a brother somewhere in this place, and the guards carry electrical-resistant gear._ All right, he was starting to get a clear picture of things. The conversation that the guards had outside of the caverns suddenly made a whole lot of sense. 

“What about the dragon?” He blurted out, and then promptly clapped a hand over his mouth, realizing what a dumb question that was. 

“There has never been a dragon,” Sherlock answered eloquently. “It’s always been my brother and me.” 

“So why are you here? And why the need for the Lightning Rain every year?” John asked, seating himself against a crate. His position would allow him to go unseen should anybody suddenly enter the room, and it could also enable him to scramble up to the air vent quickly should he need to make a hasty escape. 

“All these questions,” Sherlock groaned, tousling his hair with both hands. The action was _adorable,_ John thought, but he tried not to make it look like he was utterly infatuated with Sherlock. 

“My brother and I were kidnapped when we were young,” Sherlock explained impatiently. “Because of our abilities. We have been imprisoned here ever since our abduction and forced to create what your village calls the Lightning Rain, every year.” He sat himself down on the dusty stone floor, leaning against the wall next to John. “Now, John, if you will help my brother and I to escape, I can assure you that the Lightning Rain will cease. It is…energy draining, to say the least, to create such forces of nature for so many days in a row.” 

“I will,” John assured, but the gears in his mind began to turn. Now that Sherlock and his unknown brother were added into the equation, there was a need to adapt their original plan to this new situation. He needed to rendezvous with Greg to rediscuss their current strategy, and then they had to figure out how to steal the guard’s keys to set Sherlock and his brother free.

Best he get moving, then.


	6. Chapter 6

In the meantime, Greg was having much more ease travelling around the caverns than John. There were dozens of crates on the higher levels, stacked as high as the granite ceiling itself, creating a makeshift maze for Greg to dart around and conceal himself within. He had just about explored every inch of the upper part of the caverns, and he just had one more section he hadn’t seen yet. Hearing voices, he ducked behind a stack of wooden crates, his heartbeat elevating slightly with the excitement of this little game of trying not to get caught by the guards. 

“That’s it for the day,” he heard a guard say to another. “Bring ‘im up some dinner, and then lock ‘im in there for the rest of the night.” 

“Roger that,” another voice said, and then there was the sound of footsteps fading into the distance. 

Were they going to lock the room? He needed to hurry and take a peek inside before they did. Perhaps it would be the room that held the control panel to the Rain, or something. Greg waited till he was sure that there was nobody in the immediate vicinity, and ducked into the room – a small one, about one and a half times the size of John’s bedroom, its four walls made completely of granite and rock. The air was musty and smelled vaguely like rust and metal, and there were puddles on the floor, made larger with every drop from the leaking ceiling. A small window, grated with thick metal bars – the first window he’d seen down here – opened into the side of the mountain, and Greg could see a light rain pitter-patter onto the ledge, contributing to the puddles of dirty water on the filthy stone floor. If you looked into the distance, you could see Baskerville, now a tiny speck in the distance, and the beehive of coal-black clouds gathered directly above the town. Even from this distance, it was hard to miss the flashes of lightning descending upon the village, now only sparks of electricity, looking from the viewpoint of the mountain.

And to the side of the room, a prison cell. Containing a single prisoner. 

Greg almost yelped when he realized that there was someone in the room with him, huffing gently when he got over his fright. The man – _boy,_ he realized – within the cell cast an uninterested glance at him, raking his eyes over his body and giving him the once-over. Apparently already unconcerned that there was an intruder, the boy averted his eyes towards the window. 

And then it struck Greg that the boy _wasn’t calling for help because he was a prisoner_ , and therefore allied towards these mysterious men in the mountains who were part of some criminal organization called J.M. And even though he was being held captive, there was something about him that screamed _majestic._ Despite the dirty rags he was dressed in, he stood ramrod straight, and held the air of regality, his head held high, subtle royal-blue eyes sharp and never missing a single detail. Light freckles peppered his cheeks and nose, almost unnoticeable in the dim light, but they were absolutely _adorable_ , Greg thought, and his darkening brown hair – which looked as if it had once been a light ginger – sitting neatly atop his head, groomed to the best of the boy’s ability. He didn’t look like he belonged in a dank and musty prison cell. He looked like he belonged on a fucking golden throne, with cushions made of the most expensive velvet material, wearing clothes of 2000-thread count Egyptian silk and holding an imperial scepter in one hand, with hundreds of servants waiting on him. And Greg wanted to give it all to him. 

He was vaguely aware that his mouth was watering. 

“I suggest you either remove your presence entirely, or find a storage container in this room to conceal your being,” the boy murmured, his voice soothing – although he probably did not mean it to be so – and low. _Oh god he was in so much trouble,_ there was absolutely no way Greg could look at any of the village girls again after seeing him. Was he, perhaps, some sort of god or angel captured from heaven and imprisoned in this mortal realm? He certainly did look like it, with the exception of wings sprouting from his shoulder blades. 

And then the words that the boy had said registered, and Greg was suddenly aware of the sound of heavy footsteps coming towards the room. 

Ducking into the shadows, he watched as a guard entered the room carrying a tray of food – what barely passed as food, anyway. The shaven, uniformed man slotted the tray into a small gap between the floor and the door of the prison cell, and turned to exit the room. The door clanged shut, and there was the metallic clicking sound of a key in the lock, before the guard turned and left. Greg’s heart sank, and something caught in his throat. There was absolutely no way he was going to escape now, not with the door locked. Throughout the whole exchange, the mystery boy in the prison cell kept his eyes averted towards the window, not looking at the guard, whilst the guard kept both his eyes firmly on the boy, as if wary that the boy – despite being caged in a tiny cell that certainly went against basic human living conditions – could phase through the steel bars and attack him.

When the man was gone, Greg reemerged, watching as the boy rearranged the plastic containers on the tray. When he was apparently satisfied with the configuration he had created, the boy turned to look up at his new prison-mate, although he still said nothing, continuing to study him with eagle-like precision. There was quiet for a few moments, with nothing breaking it except the light thumping of the rain against the windowsill. 

Greg felt the silence a little stifling, so he decided to say the first thing that popped into his mind. “Greg Lestrade.” 

The boy shifted his gaze to Greg’s face, and sharp royal-blues met stormy-grey irises. Greg stared back unflinchingly. “Hello, Gregory.” 

“Greg,” Greg corrected immediately, out of habit. “Only my grandmother calls me Gregory.”

The boy studied him again, and Greg desperately wanted to give in to his urges and avert his eyes away from this mysterious boy. “Mycroft Holmes,” he said at last, and _what kind of a name was Mycroft?_ Still, it sounded suitable for someone who looked as…princely, he supposed, was the word, as Mycroft did. Unique and regal, just like him – fit for a prince, or a king, or a member of royalty. Perhaps Mycroft was actually a relative of the Queen or something, and he’d been captured and held for ransom? He repeated the name, just to test it on his tongue. It sounded absolutely natural, as if he’d been saying it for years. 

“I have some inquiries regarding your being here,” Mycroft said finally, pushing away the tray of food, even though he hadn’t eaten a single morsel. “I am hoping you will answer them.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Greg found himself saying. He watched as Mycroft settled himself near the edge of his cell, motioning for him to do the same, and he kneeled, ready to duck into the shadows should anybody come into the room suddenly. “I, uh. Live in the village at the foot of the mountain.” He made sure to keep his voice low so that no passing guards would hear him. “Every year, we’ve got this bloody odd weather phenomenon – the Lightning Rain, we call it. It’s happening right now, as a matter of fact. Bloody lightning flashing in all sorts of weird colors, it’s the strangest thing, really –”

“Gregory,” Mycroft stopped him, softly. Greg almost wanted to correct him, but something held him back, silently willing Mycroft to continue. “I know all about your Lightning Rain. You aren’t answering my question.” 

“I was kind of getting there,” Greg began to say, and then stopped short. Raising an eyebrow, he turned his head slowly back to Mycroft. “You _know_ all about the Rain?” 

“Of course,” Mycroft replied coolly. “I created it, after all.”

\--- 

“You what?” Greg demanded, after a moment of incredulous silence.

Mycroft sighed. “I created it, Gregory. Now, you still aren’t answering my question.” 

“You… _created_ the Rain.” Greg was staring at him, squinting, lips parted slightly in a disbelieving expression. He blinked, slowly, and then shook his head. “Okay, there are so many things…how do you _create_ the Rain, for one? And why the bloody hell do you see fit to have it storm over my town once a year, waterlogging the village and killing all our crops?” He was starting to raise his voice, and Mycroft shot a pointed look at the door, a reminder that anyone could hear him should they pass by. Greg immediately hushed. 

“I asked a question first,” Mycroft murmured, when they had held still for several minutes and there was no sign that anyone had heard them. “So I should like my inquiry answered, before you go about asking yours.” There was a sort of steel in his voice, something that Greg thought nobody would dare defy, and so he shut up the nagging questions niggling at the back of his mind, and rushed through his story of how he was trying to stop the Rain by coming up here and slaying the dragon. Which, he thought, was rather a stupid thing to say, now that they were certain there was no dragon living in the Opal Mountains. “And then we heard a noise, so we came to investigate, and found the opening to…this secret mountain headquarters. And we came in, and we decided to split up to investigate. So I was scrounging around the top floors when…I found you,” Greg finished, and he was most definitely _not_ obsessed with the way Mycroft nodded his head and blinked firmly, a concentrating expression on his face as he watched Greg tell his tale. 

“And now I do believe you owe me an explanation of your own,” Greg grinned, leaning back against the wall and waiting for his new friend to get with it. 

“Very well,” Mycroft conceded. “Look out the window, Gregory.” 

“Greg,” Greg corrected, but still obeyed Mycroft’s instruction. Outside, the clouds were still dark and inky, camouflaging perfectly into the night sky, illuminated only by the flashes of colored lightning, and even then only temporarily. The clouds were circling over the little town of Baskerville, never moving far away, and always floating back to the gathering point, which appeared to be directly over the town hall. 

“I create the storm clouds,” Mycroft explained, and as he did so Greg felt the temperature drop drastically in the room, plummeting to perhaps below zero. He pulled his jacket around him tighter, teeth chattering, curling in on himself, taking long and slow breaths. Turning back to Mycroft to demand what the hell was going on and _why the bloody hell was it so cold,_ he saw his new crush cupping his hands together. Wisps of what looked like grey smoke began to gather within his palms, a small circle of grey cotton candy cradled in his hands. It grew larger, and larger, and _larger still,_ until it was about the size of Greg’s entire being. Mycroft pushed it away towards the window, and there it went, drifting through the metal grates to float up into the sky above. Greg watched it go upward, and it finally settled, although it did not go as high up as normal clouds did. With a snap of Mycroft’s fingers, the cloud began to release its load of rainwater, and some of it splashed on the windowsill. A flick of Mycroft’s wrist, and the cloud began to move away slowly, towards the other side of the mountains, until it was away from Greg’s sight. The temperature in the room returned to normal. 

“By balancing the temperature and the level of oxygen,” Mycroft said, “I can create cumulonimbus and nimbostratus clouds. What is special about my clouds, however, is that they can rain for unlimited periods of time, until I dissipate them.” 

“That’s…fantastic,” Greg whispered. “I don’t suppose you’ll show me how you do the lightning, too?” 

“Oh,” Mycroft appeared somewhat annoyed. “I can’t do that, unfortunately. The pyrotechnics aren’t my area of expertise.” He paused. “My brother does them.” 

“Your brother? They’re keeping him here, too?” Greg’s head snapped up. “Well, if you know what I’m here for – I don’t suppose you could stop the Rain, then?” 

“Unfortunately not,” Mycroft sighed, leaning back against the wall of his tiny prison cell. “They threatened harm to my little brother should I ever stop the Rain. I imagine they’ve threatened harm to me, in a similar fashion, too, should my brother ever stop with the lightning.” He sat up straight. “You see, Gregory, my brother and I were captured for our abilities when we were children, and we have been used to create what you know as the Lightning Rain ever since our abduction.” 

“Then we need to get you out,” Greg answered, scrambling around and looking for a key, hoping that the guards might have been arrogant enough to leave it in the room with their prisoner. Damn it, obviously they were taking strict precautions. The only thing he could find was a crowbar, broken in half. “We’ve got to rescue you, and then you can stop the Rain, right?” 

“Yes, _if_ you could get me out,” Mycroft sighed, apparently uninterested in his rescue effort. “Unfortunately, it appears you’re stuck in the room with me, with no means of escaping. And, even if you did, there are approximately a hundred guards roaming these caverns. What makes you so sure you’ll be able to avoid every single one of them?” 

Greg frowned, and then he looked at the crowbar he’d found, and then back to the window. And then to the crowbar, and back to the window. And then back to the crowbar. 

“I might have an idea,” he muttered.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our favourite boys make their great escape.

“Where is that bloody wanker?” John grumbled, back plastered to the rocky wall of the original tunnel they’d entered the caverns in, sweating slightly from all the excitement and crawling around on his hands and knees. For a moment he wondered if Greg had been caught; but it would be rather unlikely, he reassured himself, for there had been no alarms sounding to alert the guards, and neither had he observed any men talking about obtaining a new prisoner. Perhaps Greg had caught himself in a compromising position that required waiting a little waiting before he would be able to escape. He would just have to be patient, then. Although it did amaze him that he had managed to wonder around for two hours around the caverns without getting caught. 

In the end his body simply just wasn’t able to sit still, and he paced around the tunnel, every now and then keeping a watchful eye out for anyone who might be entering it. But he appeared to be lucky, because nobody did so much as even _walk_ near it, most of the guards busy with unpacking wooden crates of treasure on the basement floor. Had they stolen these precious gems and metals from rich people in distant towns, perhaps, and had sent them all to this storage facility in the mountain? Possible – although John knew that they couldn’t possibly have stolen anything from Baskerville, for there were not many rich people in their little village. And who was the criminal mastermind behind this? Answers, perhaps, that John did not want to know. All he wanted was to get Greg, rescue Sherlock and his unknown brother, and then escape back to Baskerville, where they could live happily ever after. _But that’s not possible,_ a small voice in the back of his mind told him. _When they discover that Sherlock and his brother have been rescued, the first place they’ll come to raid is Baskerville._ He couldn’t possibly risk endangering the calm and simple lives of everybody in their little village. And then there was his little crush on Sherlock. There was absolutely no way he was going to let that interfere with his quest in rescuing him, and stopping the Lightning Rain once and for all. 

Although…he wondered if there was even the _remotest possible chance_ that Sherlock would, maybe, _perhaps,_ by chance, like him back. 

The sound of his name being whispered harshly derailed that train of thought. In front of him, he could see the silhouette of Greg scrambling into the tunnel entrance – the _wrong_ entrance, he realized. Greg had entered the tunnel through the entrance that led out into the mountain grounds, not the other entrance which had led into the caverns dug deep inside the mountains. “How did you get out there?” John demanded harshly, but paused when he realized the state his friend was in. Some hours of creeping around in the air vents had caused every droplet of water on his jacket to dry, but Greg’s looked as if he’d been walking around in the downpour just recently. His fingernails were grimy, his hands black with dirt gathering in his palm-lines, and – was that a _crowbar_ in his left hand? 

“What the bloody hell have you been up to?” John murmured, as Greg collapsed to the floor, panting harshly through his mouth. 

“You’ll never believe what I found,” Greg said almost at the same time, and they stared at each other for a while before John beckoned him to continue with his story.

“They’re keeping a boy prisoner here,” he explained, expecting John to appear incredulous, but mildly surprised when John nodded expectantly, disinterested even. “He controls the Rain.” 

“You’ve met Sherlock’s brother, then.” John sounded much calmer than he felt. 

“Well, he did mention he had a brother, I just didn’t know his name was Sherlock –” Greg grabbed John’s hands, when he realized what John was implying. “You’ve _met_ his brother? And what kind of a name is _Sherlock?_ Ah, but then again that’s something I’d expect of someone who’s named Mycroft.”

“Oh, so that’s what his brother is named,” John nodded. _Figures._

“He controls the weather, bloody hell,” Greg rambled on, not realizing that John was only half paying attention. “Made a cloud for me and all that. With his bare hands, John! He didn’t even _say_ anything, he just summoned a cloud out of thin air with his palms and it bloody floated out of the window and _rained down on me_ as I was trying to climb out of that awful room.” 

“Yeah, Sherlock made this lightning orb that had thirteen different sorts of colors.” John flashed back to the amazing display and remembered how awed he’d been when Sherlock had just conjured up a sphere of electricity out of nowhere, cradling it in his bare palms, tending to the electricity with his uncovered flesh. “He controls the lightning, apparently. Wait a second – you _climbed_ out of a room?” 

“They’re keeping Mycroft in the highest level,” Greg pointed in the general direction of the room which he’d just escaped. “A room nearest to the edge of the mountain. They locked me in when I went inside to take a look around, and then I had a nice, long chat with Mycroft.” If a part of John’s brain hadn’t already been occupied with thinking about Sherlock’s delicate features and razor-sharp cheekbones, he would have noticed how Greg blushed and his pupils dilating slightly whenever he said Mycroft’s name. 

“There was a window, you see, and I found a crowbar, so I hacked off some of the bars and climbed out. I replaced them, of course, so that no one would notice, and then I climbed down to a small ledge in the mountain wall and ran back here to meet you.” 

“You realize you could have used the air vents,” John rolled his eyes. 

“Oh,” Greg wanted to slap himself for not thinking of that earlier. “I’ll use them later,” he promised. “But right now, we need to rescue some people.” 

“Although there _is_ one thing,” John frowned, motioning to the caverns. “Why the bloody hell has someone hollowed out a part of the mountain and is using it for a storage to keep gold and other precious treasures, and why the bloody hell do they need Sherlock and Mycroft to conjure up the Lightning Rain every year, for fifteen days and fifteen nights.” 

“I suspect we’ll find the answers soon,” Greg grimaced. He had a bad feeling about this.

“I have a feeling I don’t want to know why,” John agreed.

\--- 

“Hurry,” John sighed impatiently, whilst keeping a lookout at the door.

“How about _you_ try sawing through these bars yourself and we’ll see how you fare,” Greg grumbled, but he did file faster, iron shavings showering to the floor with every movement of the crowbar against the bars of the prison cell.

“Oh my,” Sherlock drawled, from where he was filing a bar of his own, with John’s Swiss Army knife. “It’s like being rescued by two monkeys.” 

“We could just leave you here,” John retorted, but they all knew he wouldn’t dare. Every now and then there came the sound of footsteps walking towards them, and Greg and Sherlock would be forced to stop filing, but it appeared they were all merely passing by only. It took a good five minutes for the first bar to give, and John reached out and caught it before it could hit the floor, shooting Greg a glare before laying it gently against a wall, making sure it was absolutely stable before letting go.

Approximately twenty minutes later they had filed off three bars; the opening big enough for someone as emaciated as Sherlock to slip through. John didn’t know whether or not to be happy about that, so he made up his mind to stuff as much food in Sherlock as he could. From the looks of it, Sherlock didn’t appear to be the kind of person that ate a lot. 

Digging up a piece of bread from his pocket, he shoved it at Sherlock. “Eat,” he commanded, and shot Sherlock a stern glare when he tried to protest. After a particularly vicious staring contest – Greg would rather call it _a period of time where the sexual tension lingering in the air was practically tangible_ \- Sherlock gave in, and bit into it, sulking all the while. 

“Up you go,” John grunted as he gave Sherlock a leg up into the air vent, then Greg, and scrambled up last with the help of his two partners-in-crime pulling him into the confined space, replacing the air vent cover as he did so. 

“We’ve got a three-hour window,” Sherlock was saying to Greg as John refitted the metal grating of the air vent cover into its original position. “We’ve got to rescue Mycroft fast, because if we don’t do it by the stipulated time they’ll open my door and see that  
I’ve gotten out, and then they’ll raise the alarm and we’ll _all_ be in trouble.” 

“And how do you expect us to climb from up to Mycroft’s cell?” Greg raised an eyebrow. “It’s as dark as hell and I can’t bloody see anything.”

“I’ll lead the way,” Sherlock announced. “I know where his room is, and I know how to access it through the air vents.” 

“You’ve been locked up in there the whole time,” John protested, as Sherlock clenched his fists and breathed out sharply, causing a current to flow through his body and illuminate his entire being, making him incandescent in the pitch-darkness of the ventilation system. The glow was slight, though it did do its job and lit up the way ahead of them. “How can you possibly know where your brother is?” 

“Simple deductions, John, or have you learnt nothing in the time spent with me?” Sherlock started crawling in the general direction of Mycroft’s cell, and the other two had no choice but to follow. At a point in time they had to climb vertically upward to reach the level that Mycroft’s cell was being held in, but there were rungs, so they climbed as quietly as possible, careful not to alert anyone. As they passed a thin section of the air vent, John could hear voices, so he pressed his ear to the cool metal and listened. 

“…two sleeping bags,” someone was saying, the voice so faint that if John wasn’t concentrating hard, he wouldn’t be able to hear it at all. “In a small cave.” 

_Oh god,_ someone had found their belongings. John wanted to smack himself for not thinking of hiding their belongings properly instead of just dumping them into the shelter they had wanted to use to sleep overnight. And now the guards were probably aware of their presence. Something within him sank at the thought of their backpacks being confiscated, along with his precious copy of _The Hobbit_ and his journal. Although material things were now the least of their worries, to say the least. They needed to locate Mycroft quickly and _leave_ , before the guards thought it necessary to check the prisoners’ cells. 

“…the boss,” another voice said. “Inform him.” 

“Hurry,” John hissed to his companions, urgency clear in his words. “They know we’re here.”

They scrambled up another storey and crawled at warp speed, until Sherlock suddenly halted and lifted a metal grate, dropping it to the side and sliding out of the air vent, landing straight into the middle of Mycroft’s cell. 

“Gregory,” Mycroft smiled, rising from where he was sitting and poking around at his food, though still not eating. “I was hoping you would not fall to an untimely death whilst climbing out of the window.” 

“Thanks for having so much faith in me,” Greg huffed, but grinned all the same, kneeling down to begin work on the bars of Mycroft’s cell. 

“And dear brother,” he murmured, turning to study Sherlock. “I see you have been rather impolite with the guards of late. How many times have I told you not to provoke them unnecessarily?” 

“They deserved it,” Sherlock shrugged. “A few extra lashes is always worth relishing the look on their faces when I inform them their wives have been sleeping with the fishmonger.” 

“When we get out of here, I’m bandaging that,” John muttered, referring to the hideous wounds on Sherlock’s back. Mycroft’s room was a lot colder than Sherlock’s cell, he realized, and he shrugged out of his waterproof jacket, draping the thing over Sherlock and shooting the younger boy a glare, daring him to argue, when Sherlock opened his mouth to protest. Although it was much colder without a protective outer covering, John was still wearing two layers of dry woolen clothes, so the temperature was still tolerable, though he suspected he would catch pneumonia soon if he deigned to stay in this room for much longer. Not wishing to simply stand there and catch a cold, John knelt down to help Greg with his knife, while it was Sherlock’s turn to stand guard.

“Someone’s coming,” Sherlock said, when they had finished cutting through two bars and were working on the final one. 

“Saw faster,” Greg told John, because there was no way they could stop now and abandon Mycroft. He wasn’t sure whether this reasoning occurred because it was logical, or because of his…uh, slight interest, in Mycroft. 

The sound of footsteps grew louder. 

John cut off the bottom bit of the bar. 

Louder. 

“Hurry, hurry,” Sherlock hissed to Greg. 

Louder still. 

“Sherlock,” John whispered. 

In the gap between the door and the floor, John could see the outlines of two feet, just right outside the room. 

“Get down,” Mycroft snarled.

Greg only had enough time to duck, collapsing on top of John as soon as the door opened, just as Mycroft let loose a blast of cold air from his outstretched palms. Water droplets crystalized mid-air, forming a block of solid ice large enough to cover the doorway, preventing anybody from entering the room. Behind the ice, John could see the blurred outline of a guard slamming his fists into the barrier of ice crystals, attempting to break through, but to no avail.

Greg cut through the bar, tossing it to the side, not caring if it made a loud noise upon impact with the floor or not. Mycroft slipped out of his cell, and they made for the window, Greg pulling out the bars which he’d sawed off earlier, and offering Mycroft a hand to help him out. When Mycroft had gotten onto the ledge which Greg had climbed onto previously, Greg gestured to Sherlock and pointed to the window. 

There came some yelling sounds from behind the barrier of ice, and the sound of more hurried footsteps rapidly approaching. “Be careful,” John warned Sherlock, as the younger Holmes grasped firmly onto a part jutting out of the uneven mountain wall, stepping gingerly onto the ledge, for it was a big drop to the bottom of the mountain, and should any one of them slip, they would be met with immediate death upon impact with the ground.

The alarm sounded. 

“Damn it,” John groaned, as he climbed out, followed by Greg, and just as all four of them were safely on the ledge, a crack appeared in the barrier, it’s presence announced by the sharp crack of sharpened metal upon ice. 

“They’re cutting through the ice,” Greg yelled, beginning to run, taking the route he had used just now, which would lead them straight into the cow-scattered grassy plains that he and John had passed not but a few hours ago. “Let’s go, let’s go!” 

John and Greg led the way, with both Holmes brothers running as fast as they could behind, though they were understandably much slower, seeing that they had not had proper physical exercise in so many years. Behind them, they could still hear the alarm, wailing to inform all the uniformed men that their prisoners had escaped, and the fading sound of shouting. John’s heart had never beat so fast in his life before. This wasn’t just a game any longer – it was real, bloody hell, and if any one of them got caught by the guards he had no doubt that they would all be shot immediately.

“Faster,” John barked to the brothers behind him. 

They ran downhill, and when they had reached the bottom of the slope and were running through the grassy plains, John realized that there were men who were pouring out from the tunnels and running after them. Behind them, on the slope, there were men tailing them as well, some having climbed out of the window as well and used the ledge to get onto the slope. If you looked at the whole thing from a distance above, it looked like tiny black ants scrambling out of their anthills and running to catch their intruders. 

Sherlock slipped. 

“Sherlock!” John yelled, doubling back to pull the younger Holmes up, keeping an eye on their pursuers. The nearest guards were about two hundred meters away. 

Mycroft stopped immediately when his brother fell, blasting icy air at the nearest men, encasing their lower bodies in ice so that they were literally frozen in their tracks. 

Sherlock got back on his feet and continued running, John slowing his pace so that he could run behind Sherlock – a protective gesture done subconsciously so that no guards would be able to catch Sherlock without going through him first. 

_I hope we make it,_ John thought grimly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Greg is actually older than John in this story, hehe. Sorry if I've missed that detail out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our favourite criminal mastermind makes his appearance.

The nearest guards were much faster than Sherlock and Mycroft, and they were closing in fast. A two-hundred meter distance from the nearest man soon became a hundred and seventy-five, and then a hundred and fifty, and now a hundred and twenty-five. The guards that Mycroft had immobilized with his ice were struggling to get out of their icy manacles, but there were too far outnumbered for Mycroft to freeze every single guard; and what was more was that his aim wasn’t exactly equivalent to that of a sniper – and this was partly due to the darkness. For every one guard frozen, Mycroft missed three more, and he was slowing himself down every time he turned around. 

Sherlock, on the other hand, had discovered that if he aimed his lightning bolts at the exposed parts of each man’s body, such as their faces, he could knock them out cold. What was more – he was a much better shot than his elder brother, and soon he had slowed down from running to jogging backwards, John running to his front and guiding him so he wouldn’t trip, whilst he sent electrical currents through the men who were running too near their little party, the currents small enough such that they would neither kill nor maim, but they were large enough to knock a grown man unconscious. 

The cows were stampeding in all directions, eager to join in the chaos, and John could see one trample over three men who were running too close to each other in the distance. He would have laughed, had he not needed all the energy his body could muster to run.

The rain continued in a slow, lazy drizzle, the sky too dark to see the clouds. 

A hundred men pursuing them decreased to seventy-five, and then to sixty, and then to fifty as most of Sherlock’s targets found their mark.

“Great job, Sherlock!” John crowed, as another man collapsed onto the grass. They were nearing the edge of the forest, now, and if there was a need to, if the men caught up to them, they could easily disappear into the branches of the tall pines, where they would pass unseen in the darkness. Furthermore, the pine forest meant that they were close to Baskerville, closer to safety. If they ran straight to the town hall, surely the men wouldn’t follow.

Fifty men decreased to forty, with Mycroft’s help. By then, the four boys had stopped running and had slowed to a slow jog, the roles reversed as prey became predator, and predator became prey. Greg and John were cheering as the guards collapsed one by one, and very soon there was a reasonable number to contend with. John was sure some of them were playing dead. 

And then everything went to hell, just as they reached the edge of Pine Forest. Armed men – covered in combat gear from tip to toe, faces protected with visor helmets, carrying guns with absurdly large barrels and with extra ammunition strapped to their chest, appeared from behind the trunks of the larger trees and from the thick branches of the pines, forming a blockade so that nobody would be able to enter the forest. Greg and Mycroft, leading their little gang of escapees, skidded to a halt first, and began backing away. 

“Shit,” John muttered, when he noticed the presence of extra troops. 

“I had not foreseen this possibility,” Mycroft sighed, frustrated that he had been distracted so much with escaping from the guards in the caverns, that they had not considered backup troops lurking elsewhere. _Of course_ there would be backup troops. Whoever the mastermind of all this was had already gone to so much trouble in kidnapping Sherlock and himself, and forcing them to create the Lightning Rain to prevent the Baskerville villagers from accessing the mountain. There was no way that he – and Mycroft was assuming that it was a _he,_ going by statistics – was going to let them go so easily, not without a fight. 

“Fuck,” Sherlock spat, much less proper than his brother.

They stood like that for a while, a stand-off – blocked from escape both front and behind. Greg and Mycroft faced the backup troops towards the Pine Forest, whilst Sherlock and John were facing what remained of the guards from the caverns, Sherlock’s hands raised and poised for attack, dangerously high electrical charges crackling along his fingertips, back to his brother’s, while John had his back to Greg. Both Holmes brothers’ minds were relentlessly contemplating possible ways of escape, dismissing ideas as soon as they generated them for lack of plausibility and practicality. All their bases were covered. Unless a new factor was abruptly introduced, there was no way out. 

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice drawled, from behind the backup troops. John had heard that voice before – there was no mistaking it. He racked his brain trying to see if he could remember where he’d heard it. It wasn’t a voice he’d heard often, but he _had_ heard it on occasion. Low and Irish, it sounded as if it belonged to someone important. 

_Someone important._

The men standing directly in front of Greg and Mycroft cracked light-sticks, and parted to form a small pathway through the woods. John heard the sound of wet leaves squelching under a boot, and turned to watch the silhouette of a man walking through the troops at a leisurely pace, hands behind his back, as if he was just going through a stroll in the park. When he arrived at the forefront of the ranks of the backup guards, he lifted his head, allowing John a good view of his face as it was illuminated in the bright light of the light-sticks.

“Council Leader Moriarty?” Greg beat him to it, but he sounded as incredulous as John felt. _Bloody hell, is that what J.M. stands for? Is he behind all this?_

John and Greg stood gaping at the man they had once thought was the wisest of all in the town Council, the man whom they thought did an excellent job of protecting the village, imposing the rules and regulations during the Lightning Rain and preventing villagers from being washed away. So all that had been a façade, after all? A ruse to keep people away from the mountain, so no one would discover his storage space for all that treasure. And just _where_ had all those precious gems and metals come from? 

“If you had abided by the rules and stayed in your houses all this wouldn’t have happened,” Moriarty sighed, pretending to be saddened. 

“You’re behind all this?” John demanded. 

“Who else would it be?” Moriarty sighed, rolling his eyes. “I must say, though, I never expected you to make it this far. I’m afraid this is furthest you’ll ever get.” 

Two men grabbed Greg’s shoulders, and Mycroft moved to intercept them, lashing out and releasing a corona of white, cold air, freezing several troopers in their ranks. A blast of fire had him withdrawing his hands immediately, however, spewing from the barrel of one of the troopers’ weapons. Mycroft took a step back, fingertips singed and scorched, but a third guard knocked him to the ground before he could retreat any further, and pinned him there with his forearm pressing against his throat, such that if Mycroft even moved the slightest bit, he would choke. Greg growled at the sight of Mycroft on the floor, and struggled even more, but stopped immediately when Moriarty instructed one of his men to put his gun to Mycroft’s temple. 

“I would suggest you give up,” Moriarty smirked. “Unless you would like brother dearest to lose his frontal lobe, _Sherrrlock.”_ The last word was trilled, with a tilt of his head. 

Red dots appeared on Sherlock’s and John’s chest, trembling ever so slightly as they pulsed. _Snipers._

Sherlock stared stonily at Moriarty, but lowered his hands, the static charge dissipating.

“Wonderful! Glad to see everyone so cooperative.” Sherlock let his hands be snapped into cuffs, keeping his gaze on John, who was shoved in the back by a gun barrel and told harshly to walk.

 _Brilliant,_ John thought. _Damned brilliant._

\--- 

Sherlock had been placed in one cell with John, while Mycroft had been put together with Greg. Their cells were built side-by-side, a separating wall in between the two cells, such that they weren’t able to see each other, but they could hear each other’s voices. Mycroft’s hands had been restrained, and chained to the wall with rusty steel. Sherlock, surprisingly, had been allowed to go unbound, but that was perhaps more to do with the fact that all the guards were dressed in electrical-resistant gear and less to do with luck.

For some reason Moriarty had his men lower the temperature in the room drastically – it was much colder than in Mycroft’s previous prison cell. Sherlock was shivering, teeth chattering, even with John’s jacket on, and although John was cold himself, he couldn’t bear the sight of Sherlock suffering, so he stripped his woolen long-sleeved shirt off and told Sherlock to wear it underneath the jacket. Sherlock looked at him oddly and tried to protest, but after a tedious back-and-forth he gave up and put the shirt on. 

And then surprised John by giving him a full-bodied hug, wrapping his limbs around the shorter boy. 

“Uh…Sherlock?” John seemed surprised, a full-body blush coming on, but hugged back anyway. 

“You’ve only got one layer on,” Sherlock explained, burying his face into John’s neck, and John shivered as Sherlock’s icy nose touched the warm skin near his Adam’s apple. “It’s imperative to share body heat when the surrounding temperature is decreasing, especially when we’ve got captors who _refuse to pay for heating,”_ he yelled, even though Moriarty wasn’t in the room with them at the present. 

“Sherlock,” a dry voice came from the cell beside theirs. “What have I told you about provoking your captors?” 

“Oh, piss off, Mycroft,” Sherlock muttered, but looked relieved anyway to hear his brother’s voice. “Someone like him isn’t worth of my manners.” 

As if on cue, Moriarty appeared at the doorway, dressed in a padded suit and gloved hands, chuckling as he entered the room and rubbing his hands. “How domestic,” he murmured at the sight of Sherlock and John, while Sherlock stuck his tongue out petulantly at him and John glared. “I trust your stay has gone well, so far. Although, it does appear that the thermostat has broken down, unfortunately. I hope you’ve got your coats.”

“What hospitable lodgings,” Sherlock spat, but hushed when John shushed him. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be in London?” John inquired, just to keep Sherlock quiet. 

“Oh, yes,” Moriarty rolled his eyes, sitting on a bench that gave him a good view of both cells. “Here come the questions. Questions whose answers I would tell you, but you’d have to die.” He crossed his legs, leaning forward, giggling softly. “But then again, you’re all going to die, after I’m finished with my business here, so it’ll be all right.” He paused. “I suppose this is the part of the story where the villain spills his backstory to the main characters,” he smirked. “Although after that, the main characters _usually_ escape their prison cells and foil the villain’s plans. Unfortunately, this isn’t at all like a typical story,” he said in a sing-song voice.

“So what’s your version?” Sherlock tilted his chin towards their captor. 

“I’ll take questions one at a time, sweetie.” Moriarty surveyed his prisoners for a moment, and then jumped up and clapped gleefully. “How about this – I tell you everything, and then I’ll take any questions you have. Sound good? All right, let’s begin.” He didn’t even wait for a response from his prisoners, before starting. “Hundreds of years ago, in the earliest days of Baskerville’s establishment,” he began, his voice dipping and rising like a storyteller’s would. “There was a dragon.”

Sherlock scoffed. 

Moriarty ignored him. “And everybody in Baskerville believed it was an auspicious symbol,” he continued, “because it seemed that every time this dragon flew past the village, there would be good weather for the fishermen and bumper crops for the plantation workers. So they built statues, _gold_ statues of it, to worship. And there was this huge ceremony every year, where all the villagers would go to a shrine and deposit their gifts to the dragon as gratitude for blessing their little town. They even went so far as to construct this gigantic underground chamber, to store all their gold statues, caricatures and busts of the dragon. They even made a gold and silver hall for it to live in, with a hundred servants made of diamond and other precious gems. They even commissioned precious metals from over the seas, and had all these treasures shipped over to Baskerville in the hopes that the dragon would enjoy them.”

“And of course you have your eye on it,” Mycroft concluded.

“Of course I do,” Moriarty grinned, twisting a diamond ring around his middle finger. “I am naturally attracted to rare metals and treasures. You’ve seen my little treasure hoard on the bottom floors of the caverns, I presume?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it _little,”_ John muttered.

“I have spent my entire life traveling to faraway countries to plunder their gold and jewels,” Moriarty shrugged nonchalantly, withdrawing a little golden crown from his suit pocket and placing it atop his head, adjusting it so that it sat there comfortably without any risk of dropping off. “This one, for instance, happens to be one of the many treasures in the Palace of Versailles.” Rubies and sapphires embedded in the gold of the crown twinkled in the dim light, flashing directly into John’s eyes and making him squint. If you looked closer, you could see intricate patterns carved into the surface of the crown, only the work of excellent craftsmen. “Of course, I’ve got plenty of other things, too. Like one of the four original Triumphal Quadriga, from Venice.” 

“The bronze horses,” Sherlock explained to John. “They were looted from Constantinople and transported back to Venice.” 

“So that’s why you’ve always been going away on trips away from the village,” Greg spoke up. “All the while when we thought you were rendering your services to people who might need it…you’ve been going around the world and doing these…nefarious deeds!” 

Moriarty gave him a look that said _tell me something I don’t already know._

“Anyway, all that gold treasure has been hidden underground by your ancestors,” he nodded to John and Greg, “for they believed that such statues of dragons were sacred, and should not be viewed by anyone other than the villagers. So whether you believe it or not, there actually lies a fortified bunker a couple of meters below Baskerville, bearing what is equivalent to the combined riches of everybody in the United Kingdom, and perhaps beyond. And that,” Moriarty stood up, “is what I have been looking for my entire life. And then I heard stories, of little children that could make snow in summer and lightning on a clear day,” he grinned, his predatory gaze turning to Sherlock and Mycroft. “And I just _had_ to have you two under my possession.” 

“They are _not_ possessions,” John snarled. “You don’t own them.” 

“You can tell yourself lies all you want,” Moriarty shrugged. “It doesn’t change anything. I had them kidnapped, of course, and put here, in my little mountain base. And then I had them create the Lightning Rain for me, while I ran into town one day and persuaded everybody that there was indeed a dragon living in the Opal Mountains.

“Everybody didn’t believe me at first, but when the first raindrops descended from the sky and the lightning began to change colors? Everybody thanked me, hoisted me upon their shoulders and carried me around for saving their butts by warning them not to go up into the mountain because of the dangerous weather-manipulating dragon,” he chuckled. “How _easy_ it was to manipulate others. And I had the Rain continue on every year, as a reminder to everybody in Baskerville how the dragon was still residing up there, and how dangerous it was to come up the mountains, no matter how big a group they were in.” 

“And that’s how you protected your base,” Greg frowned. “You scared everybody away from the mountains so that they wouldn’t come up here and discover your headquarters.” 

“Now you understand!” Moriarty threw his hands up into the air. “Yes, I had to set up my base somewhere near Baskerville, so I could send men every year to scout out the possible entrances into that underground treasure. Digging wasn’t an option, since many people enter and leave Baskerville every day, so someone would eventually discover the holes I was making if I sent men to dig,” Moriarty explained. “So every year, during the Lightning Rain, when nobody is allowed to enter or leave, a whole team of men go out and scout for possible entrances for me to access my treasure hoard. Do you ever notice how I leave for London a week before the Rain? I come here and start preparations for the Rain, and I oversee the operations going on during my fifteen-day window. And so far, we’ve had no luck. Not until…not until last year.

“There’s a secret entrance, somewhere in the outskirts. We found it purely by accident. But there was a keyhole,” Moriarty pretend-pouted, “and nothing we did could open the door, because the earliest Baskerville villagers had engaged some excellent craftsmen to build their entrance door. Fire wouldn’t burn it, water wouldn’t rust it, bullets wouldn’t penetrate it, nothing worked.”

Something clicked in John’s head. “The key from the town hall.” He remembered that conversation with Grandpa Watson so many days ago, when the elders had congregated in the town hall to discuss about the missing key. _The historical value it holds is only worth to our village,_ Grandpa had said. _What reason would they have to take it?_

 _”Exactly!”_ Moriarty snapped his fingers, the sudden motion making Greg flinch. “And then I remembered about the key in the town hall. I managed to have one of my men steal if after I left the village ‘for London’,” he made quotation marks with his hands around the words _for London,_ “and it was a perfect fit. It opened the door, and you have no idea how _happy_ I was about that!” He started jumping excitedly, like a little child, and John raised an eyebrow. 

“But there is an _awful_ lot of treasure down there,” Moriarty said, once he managed to calm down. “And there was no way fifteen days alone was going to be enough to transport it all out. So I had to extend the Lightning Rain for a couple of days. As we speak, in fact, most of the treasure has already been transported out of the underground bunker and into my little storage base. You wouldn’t _believe_ the things I found down there!” He clapped his hands gleefully. “Oh, there were statues as high as the town hall building, and golden spears and shields, diamond-encrusted rings and jewelry, and even a ruby-studded _chariot!_ A chariot, imagine that, Sherlock.” 

“Wonderful,” Sherlock said drily. 

“Anyway, I’ll need the Rain to continue on for a few more days,” Moriarty finished. “And then I’ll kill all of you.”

“I could just stop it now,” Sherlock shot back defiantly. 

“And see John Watson being put to death? Nah, I don’t think you’ll want to risk it,” Moriarty shrugged. “You’ve grown rather…attached to him, after all.” 

John blushed a little harder. 

“And now I have a major excavating operation to overlook,” Moriarty skipped toward the door. “Goodbye now, my little lovebirds! Savor what little time you have together.” 

“Wait,” John called, and Moriarty whirled around to look at him. “Why did you start the Rain early?” 

“Oh, I was impatient to get my treasure,” Moriarty replied airily, before he exited and slammed the door behind him.

They were left in silence. 

“Great,” John muttered. _No way out of this hellhole. Now we’re all going to die,_ he thought inside, but outside he said to Sherlock, who was still pressing his face into the crook of John’s neck, “Got any ideas?” 

“I’m thinking,” Sherlock mumbled, hugging him closer. 

“No, you’re not,” Mycroft’s voice said, from the other cell. “If you were, you’d have come up with an idea by now.” 

Sherlock huffed but said nothing, continuing to get in John’s personal space. 

“Sherlock?” John patted him reassuringly. Dare he hope that this was… _perhaps, maybe, hopefully,_ a sign that Sherlock liked him back? He had originally thought that there was absolutely no chance of Sherlock liking him back. Him, a simple village boy, a _boring_ and regular person whose mind did not consist of elaborate configurations and intricate thought patterns, not like Sherlock’s. There was absolutely no way he could keep Sherlock. Sherlock was going to be bored of him in less than a day, having figured out everything there was to him, having distilled the essence of _John Watson_ into a little section at the back of his brain. 

But now…he wasn’t so sure. And it was all so confusing. Having heartaches over someone he had just met? That was absurd. And hadn’t he always fancied girls? John shook his head, sighing and just enjoying the feeling of holding Sherlock. This was all so _confusing._

“He’s right,” Sherlock whispered, so soft that Greg and Mycroft wouldn’t hear anything. 

“What?” John raised an eyebrow, staring at his armful of tall, lanky boy genius. 

“Nothing,” Sherlock mumbled, and John wanted to demand an explanation, but he couldn’t force himself to disturb Sherlock, so he just sat there, Sherlock in his arms, feeling content for the moment even with impending death staring at him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out chapters are going to be quite slow, because I'm in boarding school till end of January so there's not much wifi there. But fear not! This work shall be finished.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Electrical torture, and declarations of love help Sherlock formulate a plan.

Moriarty had left them in there for over two hours now. 

Mycroft had assured them that he was used to the cold, and the low temperatures would have absolutely no effect on him. And John couldn’t see what the hell Greg was doing to keep himself warm, but he did remember that Greg had bundled up with three layers of clothing under his big jacket, so there wasn’t a very high chance of Greg catching pneumonia anytime soon. 

Which left Sherlock. 

Sherlock, who was so thin that John doubted he would survive through even the common cold. Sherlock, who was trembling so much from the cold that John wondered if he would make it through the night. Sherlock, whose head was snuggled directly under John’s jaw, such that John could hear the vicious chattering of teeth. 

Sometime in those two hours, Moriarty had lowered the temperature even more. It was starting to become a fucking _freezer_ in here. 

_And yet he can’t let Sherlock die so soon,_ John thought. _After all, he still needs the Rain to continue._

John had wondered, briefly, how the hell he was surviving this. Perhaps it was because he was much more well-fed than Sherlock, so at least he had a good layer of fat to act as insulation. Also, the single layer he was wearing was rather thick, so there was that. 

Most of those two hours had consisted of Sherlock trying to get as close to John as possible – and John honestly didn’t mind, not even in the least – and burrowing his icy nose into various points in John’s neck where his internal temperature was higher. There was little talk between them, John merely savoring the moment, while Sherlock did…whatever Sherlock did, in that gigantic brain of his. 

“It’s a mind palace,” Sherlock had whispered. “I keep all my important things there.” 

“Like what?” John had asked, simply to keep Sherlock talking so he wouldn’t go unconscious or…John didn’t want to think of it. 

“Like you.” Sherlock had wheezed tiredly. “I’m discovering all sorts of fascinating things about you.”

That made John’s heart thud uncontrollably in his chest, and there was this feeling lodged somewhere in his throat – not a bad feeling, but rather, it felt like he was floating, like he was getting high. _Is this how it feels when people take drugs?_ It was an odd feeling, something he hadn’t experienced in a long time, but he’d felt it before, like when his mother had taken him to the ice-cream shops when he was little, before she had passed away or when his grandfather hugged him. He was surprised to find out that it was _happiness._

“Fascinating things?” John prompted. Perhaps Sherlock _did_ like him after all. “We’ve been sitting here the past couple of hours and doing nothing but hugging each other.” 

“Sharing body heat,” Sherlock corrected, but shifted slightly so that his knee was in John’s lap. “Even so. Just sitting here with you is fascinating.” 

John felt his cheeks heat up in a furious blush. 

“I’m building a little room for you,” Sherlock continued, unaware of the effect he had on John. “It’s in the highest level of the tallest turret of the main block.” He went on rambling about its description, and only then did John realize Sherlock was referring to his mind palace. “It’s got no balcony, just two windows, one which you can look out of to see the north tower, and through the other you can see the west tower. There are flowers, though, growing in a little elongated rectangular pot attached to the bottom of the windowsill. They’re daisies, the same color as your hair and their leaves are greyish-black, same color as your eyes.” 

John was positively sure he couldn’t turn any redder. “And what’s in it?” 

“Cupboards. A little bed to one corner, and a chair. There’s your jacket draped over the chair.”

“I…see.” John had his head facing away from Sherlock, and so he allowed himself a smile. 

They continued sitting like this for a while more, with the occasional murmur of Mycroft and Greg’s conversation drifting into earshot, words so soft John was unable to make out their meaning. And when they were transitioning into their third hour, when John’s limbs were stiff due to physical inactivity and Sherlock was dozing lightly, head lolling on John’s shoulder, John never once releasing him, the door slammed open, admitting a bulky man. His uniform was somewhat similar to that of Moriarty’s other minions, but there were several gold medals pinned to the breast of his uniform, and what was more important was the fact that there was a gun slung over his shoulder, the massive barrel pointing accusingly at the corner of the room. _Some sort of a high ranking within Moriarty’s organization,_ John supposed. _Maybe Moriarty’s Number One or something like that._

“Colonel Sebastian Moran,” Sherlock mumbled into John’s ear, startling John a little, for he had thought that Sherlock was asleep. “Ex-sniper in the French special forces. He’s…he’s dealt with me a few times before.” His voice was so soft, almost fading, that John held him tighter and steadfastly refused to think of what would happen if Moran ever got his hands on Sherlock again. 

Behind Moran, a fully-armored trooper wheeled in a cart displaying various sorts of unpleasant torture weapons. 

Sherlock shuddered at the sight, and turned into John’s embrace. 

“You’re going to outlive your usefulness very soon,” Moran informed them, and John noticed how the man had a deep, sinister voice, speaking of untold promises of what he was going to do to his prisoners. “In approximately less than a day, to be exact.” He snapped on surgical gloves, doing so with medical precision. “Most of the gold has been moved out of the bunker, and once we have taken out everything, there’ll be no use for you any longer. So the boss has allowed me to have a little bit of fun before he   
decides to eliminate you from the game.”

“Not that it was ever a fair game, to begin with,” Greg grumbled from the other side of the cell. 

“You’re right. It never was. So how about this – we’ll play a new game, now. I’ll ask you a question about John,” he nodded to Sherlock, “and if you get it wrong, then little Johnny boy here gets it. Understand?”

Sherlock’s eyes widened. “No – no, not John –”

“Sorry, under strict orders from the boss not to overtly harm you Holmeses.” Moran dug around in his pocket and fished out a jangling key-ring, fitting one key into the padlock to open the prison cell. “So I guess that only leaves me with you two village boys.”

Something in John’s chest plummeted. And yet, he felt oddly relieved that Sherlock wasn’t going to be subject to any more brutal tortures. For the next twenty-four hours, at least, and then who knew what Moriarty would do to all four of them when their powers were no longer necessary. 

“No,” Sherlock gasped, and with all the strength his emaciated body could muster – which was, surprisingly, quite a lot – he pushed John into the faraway corner of the cell, and shifted his body so that he was directly blocking Moran’s path to John. 

Not that he could do anything much against ex-Special Forces, of course. 

“Sherlock!” John heard Mycroft scream, and then Sherlock was bodily shoved aside, Moran kicking him hard enough that his head and back collided with the wall in a sickening _crack_ that made John want to heave what little food he had eaten the night before. 

Sherlock slumped to the floor, panting, his eyelids fluttering rapidly as he tried to regain his bearings. A thin line of blood trickled from his temple to his cheek, and then there was a soft, keening sound. A wound on his back had reopened upon impact with the uneven wall. 

_“Sherlock!”_ John yelled, and moved to get up, but Moran pressed a solid boot to Sherlock’s leg, and stomped down. 

Sherlock screamed his tibia cracked under the weight of an 80 kilogram man. 

“If you wish for Sherlock Holmes to walk again,” Moran said coldly, “you won’t resist.” 

John gritted his teeth and did as he was told. The sight of Sherlock _whimpering,_ gasping in poorly-concealed pain as Moran callously kicked his bad leg once again before stalking over to John, made John’s blood boil; Sherlock turned his head weakly towards John to look at him pitifully through bright half-closed eyes, his face paler than usual. _John, no._

John was so occupied with the thought of Sherlock being injured that he let out a muffled yelp, startled, when something metallic closed around his wrist with a _snap,_ and he looked down to see that Moran had cuffed both his arms to the wall, leaving little room for him to struggle.

“Every time I ask a question, your boyfriend here has to answer,” Moran instructed in a clipped, emotionally detached tone. “And then you’ll tell me whether his answer is right or wrong. And you can’t lie, because I’ll know.” Stepping out of the cell, he rummaged around in his cart, pointedly ignoring Mycroft’s yell of “What the _hell_ are you doing to my brother and John?” and dug out a polygraph. Returning to John’s side, he began attaching wires from the polygraph to John’s wrists, not caring if they pinched or left him with scabs. “Abstaining from playing the game is only going to make it hurt even more, understand, Johnny boy? And if you lie…well, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to lie to me.” 

John swallowed, and shifted his gaze to Sherlock. 

“Alright,” Moran chuckled, dragging the cart into the room. “Shall we begin?”

\---

He screamed just as another wave of electricity surged through his body, making his muscles seize up and contract uncontrollably. There were electric burns from Moran’s taser from where Moran had struck him in the forearm, stomach, and shoulder, miniature Lichtenburg figures beginning to form on those areas. When the current stopped, he collapsed back onto the floor, his head swimming and his vision rapidly blurring, what little dinner he’d eaten the previous night threatening to make a reappearance. All he could make out was the sinewy body of Moran, sitting outside the cell and leaning forward as if this was some sort of sick entertainment show, and Sherlock, who chained to the other side of the cell, head bowed and eyes squeezed shut.

Greg was shouting something – he couldn’t make out _what._

“Question four,” Moran’s voice had a gleeful edge to it. “When is John’s birthday?” 

Sherlock looked up, pain and torment in his eyes, heartbroken that he was causing John so much pain. He’d failed to answer two out of the previous three questions correctly, and he couldn’t help but feel that those electric burns on John’s skin were all his fault. _Why couldn’t it be me instead of John?_ At least with him it would be nothing that he wasn’t already used to. The guards gave him electric shocks with their tasers every now and then when he was being disobedient. John was…John was perfect and he’d like for him to stay that way. Would John hate him now that he’d failed him?

“Ten seconds,” Moran warned. 

John felt desperate, _heartbroken_ baby blues turn to look at him, but he was too tired to lift up his head to send a comforting gaze to Sherlock. 

“July,” Sherlock blurted, when Moran had reached the final three numbers of the countdown. “July…the seventh.”

“John?” Moran prompted. 

“Wrong,” John murmured. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take this. Even when the current had been shut off, his muscles were still spasming and twitching weakly, fingers trembling as he tried to clench his fists in a futile attempt to brace himself for the next electric shock. 

It hurt. It hurt no less than the first three times Moran had administered the current, and when it hit him he was too numb to scream. The pain snaked through each vein, every capillary in his body, and there was a heady buzzing around the area of the current’s entry points. He sagged forward in his chains, unsure if the electric shock was over because there was just so much _pain._

Well. If him taking the brunt of the torture meant that Sherlock remained physically intact and unharmed, then it was okay, he supposed. 

There were some murmurings, and then more shouting – he couldn’t make out whose voice was whose because his ears were ringing – and then the floor vibrated beneath him as a door slammed – did that mean Moran was finally gone? – and then Sherlock was beside him, whispering things into his ear. 

_Sherlock._

John willed his ears to start functioning properly, and as they did so Sherlock’s distorted, unnaturally deep tones transitioned into his normal, beautiful baritone voice. 

“John, John, I’m so sorry,” Sherlock was murmuring – was he _crying?_ \- and he could feel spindly fingers scrabbling at his chains, trying to unlock him from his manacles. Something wet and clear dripped onto his filthy wrists, and when he was free from his binds he was immediately pulled into a crushing hug, Sherlock’s head slotting itself perfectly into the crook of his neck.

“Hey, hey,” John whispered, tongue dragging itself out to run across his chapped upper lip. Raising a trembling hand, he patted Sherlock’s back clumsily. “We’re good, I’m fine.” 

“It’s my fault,” Sherlock sobbed harshly into his neck. “It’s my fault you’re hurt, it’s my fault I didn’t know the answers to those questions, I’m supposed to know _everything,_ , I’m sorry, it’s my fault you’re so cold, you’re shivering –”

“Hey!” John said, a little louder now, and the lankier boy looked up into those half-lidded stormy grey eyes, surprised to see that they were neither filled with anger nor hate. “None of this is your fault.” His tongue felt thick and awkward after the electric shocks, so he had to force some of the words out as he felt his voice growing weaker. “You want to blame someone, blame Moriarty and his cronies. You didn’t force us to play that horrid game.” 

“But I’m supposed to _know_ things, John,” Sherlock huffed, as John wiped his tears away with an arm that felt as heavy as lead. “I’m supposed to be good at deducing things.” 

“And you are,” John smiled, smoothing his cheek. Even in the aftermath of a torture, even when he was crying, Sherlock still managed to look devastatingly handsome. “But you have to see clues to be able to deduce. There aren’t any visible clues for you to deduce someone’s birthday.” He paused. “Well, unless I’m wearing a badge that says, ‘Hey, I’m born on January the fifth!’” 

Sherlock chuckled softly, and he draped John’s jacket around the both of them, snuggling close to John and resuming their earlier cuddling position. “You’re born on January the fifth?”

“Yes, actually.” 

“I chose July because it was the month which most babies are born in the United Kingdom. Statistically speaking, there would be a higher chance of getting it right if I were to choose July.” 

“Oh, Sherlock.” Only Sherlock would be able to talk about numbers and statistics and the likelihood of answering a question correctly and still be able to sound utterly _adorable_. “I love you.” 

_Fuck._

He felt Sherlock stiffen in his arms, and the soft huffs of his breaths still. 

_You great git, you’ve just lost your chance with the most interesting boy you’ve ever met! Nobody says their declarations of love within 48 hours of meeting someone! Apologize, say something, before…_

That train of thought was cut off when he felt Sherlock pressing his lips to his mouth, immediately short-circuiting his brain and causing his trembling fingers to relax. Their tongues danced together, and it was so blissful that John could have sworn his brain had melted to mush and was dripping out of his ears. 

“I love you too,” Sherlock whispered, when they finally broke apart for air. They lay like that for a while, neither talking, just relishing the feeling of having each other in their arms.

“I’ve always wanted bees.”

“What?” John was in the midst of dozing off, and had been caught off-guard by that comment. 

“Bees,” Sherlock reiterated, shifting around to look at John. “I was thinking, if we ever met somewhere else, if we weren’t in this situation, if…if we’d met in a café, instead of the mountains. I’d probably be pissing someone off with my deductions and you’d come up to me, and, instead of reprimanding me, you’d probably say ‘Brilliant’. And then we’d talk, and I’d offer you to move in with me.” 

John smiled. “And how can you be so sure that I’d accept a random stranger’s offer of moving in with him after just one conversation?” 

“I’d impress you with deductions about you. And then you’d praise me some more, and you’d accept the flatshare. And then we’d move into a cozy little apartment, somewhere in the big city, not in a dreary little village. And then you’d work at a clinic and I’ll be a consulting detective for the police.” 

“Consulting detective?” 

“I’d be the only one in the world. You know – when the police are out of their league, they’d come to me for help. And you’d come with me on my cases, too, you’d assist me and be my sounding board and conductor of light in the middle of a room full of idiots they call police investigators, and we’d continue life like this, and then after a while I’d propose to you, or you would propose to me, and then we would get married. And then we’d have a baby. But a flat’s not going to be enough for the two or three kids we’re planning for, so we’d have to move to a cottage in the countryside. Sussex, maybe. And that cottage would have a vegetable garden at the back, its perimeter lined with bee hives. I’ve always wanted to keep bees.” 

John sat in stunned silence, as he attempted to process all this information. _Getting married? Children?_ It was…sort of sweet that Sherlock had given so much thought to their theoretical future together, he supposed. 

But they wouldn’t be able to get married, have kids, or move to a cottage in Sussex. They were stuck here, in the middle of the mountains, trapped by a madman who was going to kill them when they had outlived their usefulness. 

“I’d like that,” John whispered. “And we’d spend the rest of our lives together, solving cases and catching criminals.”

There was a very long pause from Sherlock, and John had assumed he’d went to sleep. 

“And we can have that kind of life,” Sherlock muttered finally, sitting up abruptly. “And we’ll get a dog, or a rabbit. Some sort of pet. It’s brilliant, John!” He leaned down to kiss a very confused John, and sat back on his heels. “Don’t worry,” he grinned, brushing John’s cheek. “We’re going to get out of here, and we’re going to live long lives filled with danger and dead bodies. I’ve got an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY I HAVE UPDATED! ^_^ Stay tuned folks, more to come! I've shortened the number of chapters in this story.


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